The chairman board of directors at the Sang’anyi tea factory Richard Migosi has urged tea farmers in Nyamira County not to sell their produce to middlemen but deliver the commodity to the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA).
Migosi said that by delivering green leaf to KTDA affiliated factories, farmers stand to gain maximum benefits from their crop as opposed to selling to the hawkers who are exploiting them through wicked scales and poor returns even after handsomely selling the crop to multinational and privately owned factories.
The liberalization in the tea sector in the 1990s ended the monopoly of the then Kenya Tea Development Authority and transformed it to an agency managing state-owned tea factories as farmers’ public limited companies.
The move triggered the mushrooming of private factories and opened the doors to multinational factories to directly buy the produce from farmers in competition with KTDA.
But speaking to farmers in Bonyamatuta early today, Migosi wondered why the farmers were being swayed by the freelance dealers who paid paltry cash while KTDA had a structured monthly pay and annual bonus which enabled farmers to even access credit facilities from banks against their KTDA factories membership shares.
He said that despite challenges in the world market which affected tea prices, KTDA was always able to compensate the farmers with bonus besides offering farmers inputs like fertilizer and tea picking garments at subsidized rates.
“Why do we have to be swayed by these rogue buyers of our crop and yet what they can give is only a slightly higher price per unit kilo than us and that is all, no bonus no fertilizer? Don’t you see you are selling at a big loss?” he asked.
Migosi at the same time hinted that the farmers would reap big in this year’s bonus pay due to the state of the dollar against the Kenyan shilling since the crop was exported and transacted in the foreign currency.
“I don’t want to confirm but I am only hinting to you that this might be your year of celebration since the dollar has gained against the Kenyan currency, and since we export and sell our finished product in the same, you never know,” added Migosi.