Nestlé has announced that they plan to spend an additional Ksh. 23 Million to empower coffee growing households in Western and Central regions of Kenya under its Nescafé Plan program. The funds will finance the third phase of the Nescafé Plan which has been launched to offer training and technical support to over 18,000 coffee farmers for the next three years.
The Nescafé Plan is a global initiative by Nestlé to create value across the coffee supply chain, from farmers to consumers. In Kenya, Nestlé launched the Nescafé Plan in 2011 with Coffee Management Services Ltd as the implementing partner. Nescafé Plan aims to build capacity by offering training and technical support to farmers. It hopes this will help to improve productivity, quality, and higher incomes for farmers.
Thousands of farmers from the first two phases of the Nescafe Plan have adopted the Batian coffee variety which is high yielding and disease resistant, hence the production is likely to more than double in the next three years.
Nestlé, through its implementation partner the Coffee Management Services (CMS) Limited, has already identified 12 coffee farmers’ cooperative societies and 24 wet mills to be part of this renewed programme. Of the 12 farmers’ cooperative societies identified six are based in Central Kenya while six are from Bungoma, Kericho and Nandi Counties. Nescafé Plan III is good news for these women and youth as they will be empowered to take up roles in coffee and allow them to receive extended agronomist support.
In the third phase, over 5,300 of the new farmers are women who will be trained on growing their coffee in an efficient and sustainable manner. This will be an addition to about 6,309 women who have already been reached and trained on cooperative leadership, coffee production, confidence building, self-development and coffee verification in phase two
Mr. Njeru Ng’entu, Managing Director of Nestle East Africa, had this to say, “The renewal of the Nescafé Plan follows the successes made in our earlier two phases where we invested over Sh70million. On average, the Farmers’ Co-operative Societies recorded a 12 per cent rise in coffee production while the quantity of coffee produced per tree by farmers who partially adopted the good agricultural practices increased from 2.5Kgs per tree to up-to 7Kgs per tree between 2011 and 2018.” He also added that, “Those who fully adopted the good agricultural practices recorded a 300% productivity growth from 2.5kg per tree at inception to 13kg per tree.”