Father of three, Patrick Kaberia Muthaura, a tea farmer from Mount Kenya, has a naturally sunny disposition. His wide smile stretches even further when he talks about his home, the fertile Nyambene hills where he has followed in his father’s footsteps, growing tea and working for Michimikuru Tea Company. He also advises other farmers on how to improve their farming practices. In the UK, they currently supply Cafedirect, Sainsbury’s and Van Rees Ltd.
Kenya is the world’s top exporter of black tea and Muthaura is proud that he comes from a region famed for producing high quality crops, but he is also worried for the future of the industry.
Agricultural products make up 65% of Kenya’s exports, with tea and coffee accounting for 42%. But these tea and coffee producing communities are suffering - 48.2% of the population live in poverty, one in four children are malnourished and many are reliant on smallholder farming.
While historically Kenya’s economy has been driven by agriculture, the growth rate of the industry is now lagging. This is a worrying trend for the communities producing tea, particularly as it comes at a time when sales of black tea are in decline. The average sale price of tea is decreasing each year. In 2016 it was $2.38 per kg, compared to $2.86 per kg in 2015. In response, Michimikuru is among the four first companies in Kenya to explore the manufacture of speciality teas which fetch higher prices in the direct market, such as green tea.
However, despite these positive moves to diversify, black tea is still the bulk of what smallholders are growing. 750,000 people depend on tea production to survive and many already live below the World Bank poverty line and face rising cultivation costs as well as food insecurity.
In recent years, unpredictable weather has damaged crops and therefore farmers’ livelihoods. Long periods of drought or heavy rainfall are reducing the land available for tea production. Muthaura says: “This is not the weather I was born with, it is a different climate … You cannot plan for the future, you don’t know what to plant; things don’t ripen properly. It is a gamble. Farmers are having a battle with the weather that we cannot win.”
In response to these challenges, Michimikuru has invested extra cash on top of sales from the Fairtrade Premium in an environmental management programme, which includes sustainable farming methods.
Across the valley from Muthaura’s farm there is a warning of how vulnerable the land is. The river has dried up and the land is parched – trees such as eucalyptus have drained the water and weakened the soil so that now when it rains there are landslides. Despite the damage the trees are doing to the land, they make good firewood and as local communities struggle to put food on the table, it is a quick way of making money.
In a bid to persuade locals to plant alternative trees on the river bank, Muthaura has been part of an environmental programme which has trained farmers to identify the trees that are causing damage and educates the community on the importance of replacing them. The Premium has also been used to establish tree nurseries: farmers are given free saplings to replace their eucalyptus with. There has been noticeable improvement in river volumes as a result.
Fairtrade farmers have also received training in diversification – growing other crops that generate additional income so as to ensure future food security and reduce reliance onbuying food. Now, 25% of members are growing vegetable and indigenous food crops such as maize, cassava and yams, which put less stress on the land.
Michimikuru Tea Company is one of 100 Fairtrade certified tea organisations around the world which together produce 11,500MT of tea. That’s the equivalent of almost 4bn tea bags.
Despite being fully certified as Fairtrade, few of these organisations are able to sell 100% of their tea under Fairtrade terms. They need more people to buy Fairtrade to increase this percentage and generate a higher amount of Premium, so they can invest further in agriculture and other benefits to the community.
It is one of the reasons why we are asking shoppers around the country to put Fairtrade in their tea breaks next month. We have invited Patrick Kaberia Muthaura to the UK for this year’s Fairtrade Fortnight, so he can tell communities and businesses across the country about the difference they can make to improve the lives of Kenyan farmers and workers.
Fairtrade Fortnight 2017 will run from 27 February until 12 March. This year the campaign’s message is, “Don’t feed exploitation. Put Fairtrade in your break.” For more information about the campaign and how to get involved, click here.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by Fairtrade Foundation, sponsor of the spotlight on commodities series
