Farmers dump tea for sweet honey

By JOB WERU

When Andrew Rugara inherited a three-acre price of land in Iriaini location, Othaya District from his father in 1982, he was expected to earn a fortune from the parcel.

His village lies in the fertile highlands of the Aberdare Ranges, where tea is the major cash crop.

Othaya is situated in a hilly topography, with a moderate climate condition, and rainfall above 900mm annually.

Soil ranges from red to low clay. It is well drained, while the area experiences two distinct rainy seasons with peaks in April, May and October, November and December.

Then, tea was a major income earner for local farmers. During booms and they were many in a year, farmers were always sure of bonuses.

In a bid to reap from a crop that sustained his father for years, Rugara planted some 3,500-tea bushes. However, he was not as lucky.

The land has since lost its potency, the farms are unproductive and the yields have fallen far much below expectations.

Falling income

"I can no longer hit my targets. My income has suffered and my livelihood now singularly depends dairy," said the father of three.

Rugara also practices the traditional subsistence farming where he plants maize, beans, and other subsistence crops.

But like other farmers in the area, Rugara’s palm-size piece of land cannot produce enough food to feed his family for a month.

Another farmer, Ms Lydia Muthoni, owner of 0.75 acre of land under tea, says tea farming is monotonous and uneconomical on small farms.

"The returns are measly, yet the inputs are massive," said Muthoni.

But this is not where it stops. The local soils are getting more acidic, a development that limits the survival of many other crops in the area.

Faced with these challenges, tea farmers in Othaya are gradually finding their footing in a different trade – bee keeping.

So far, at least 6,000 tea farmers at Iriaini Tea Factory have already acquired hundreds of beehives to diversify their income.

The farmers have acquired a 150-acre piece of land in Nyeri town, where they plan to erect 12,000 bee hives in three years.

Through the bee project, introduced by Fair Trade Company — also the marketers of Iriaini Tea factory — the farmers hope to raise 288,000 kilogrammes of honey annually.

"We expect to sell it at Sh500 per kilogramme. The demand for honey is grand both locally and internationally," said Rugara.

The farmers have estimated to raise an extra Sh144 million annually from honey sales to complement their earnings from tea sales.

Mr Tarsisio Maina, a director with Iriaini Tea Factory, and chairman of Fair Trade Company said the venture would help farmers explore other farming methods, and also concentrate on conserving the environment.

Dwindling earnings

Maina said the introduction of bee keeping was also aimed at persuading farmers from uprooting their tea bushes out of frustrations due to dwindling earnings.

"The venture would offer an alternative mode of raising income, and help farmers maintain their existing tea plantations," said Maina.

Tea is Kenya’s second highest foreign exchange earner, and also the best cash crop, ahead of coffee.

A project proposal prepared by the factory on behalf of the farmers indicated that 93 per cent of farmers and workers in the locality earn less than two dollars a day, hence making them unable to meet their daily obligations.

Majority of them rely on tea picking, which is seasonal and constrained to two peaks every year.

They are also wholly dependent on weather and a rather uncertain global market that is more dependent on global production volumes and unbalanced trading rules.

Against all these odds, the farmers are saddled with the responsibility of paying school fees and family upkeep in the face of the ever-increasing inflation and cost of living.

Previously, some small-scale farmers in the area and other tea growing zones in the larger Nyeri had started uprooting their crop, citing frustrations in payments.

Kenya Tea Board and Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA), however, moved to arrest the situation and warned errant farmers with legal action, if they uprooted their bushes.

The farmers hailed the bee project as timely and would enable them expand their earnings, as well as help in the conservation of the environment.

Honey production

The farmers have also started planting different tree species and fruits, among them, passion fruit. They are also planting flowers, on which bees rely to produce honey.

Several individual farmers have already set up apiaries in their farms. Due to the high demand for beehives, Mr Simon Muchiri ekes out a living constructing beehives for farmers and the factory.

"I make beehives that are able to hold eight kilogrammes of honey from local material. I sell each of them Sh2,600," said Muchiri, a carpenter.

"There is ready market for honey, and the existing beekeepers cannot satisfy demand."

The farmers expect to harvest honey after every four months, to ensure there is average production all over the year.

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