Nestlé has today unveiled a plan to spend about Ksh40 million to boost production and encourage participation of both women and youth in coffee farming in Central and Eastern Kenya.
The funds will finance the second phase of the Nescafé Plan programme, which has been renewed to offer training and technical support to about 41,000 coffee farmers for the next three years.
Through Nescafé Plan implementation partner Coffee Management Services (CMS) Limited, it has has recruited an additional 15, 000 coffee farmers and five cooperatives to be part of this renewed programme. Threre are 26,000 farming families and nine cooperatives already benefitting from the programme.
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“The renewal of the Nescafé Plan follows the successes made in the first phase where we invested about Ksh30million. On average, the Farmers’ Co-operative Societies recorded an 83 percent rise in coffee production while the quantity of coffee produced per tree increased from 2.5Kgs per tree to up-to 10Kgs between 2011 and 2014,” said Ciru Miring’u, Managing Director at Nestlé Kenya.
Thousands of farmers have also adopted the Batian coffee variety which is high yielding and disease resistant, hence the production is likely to more than double in two years according to Ms. Miring’u.
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