Coffee milling is no hard science; farmers should do it themselves

We, in this sub-sector, know that there are no attractive profit margins in milling coffee, but the farmers need to mill their coffee for the sake of aggregating the produce for potential buyers.

Nothing frustrates me like seeing a buyer visiting a cooperative society to buy coffee only to get disappointed due to low volumes. Most of our coffee cooperatives do not have volumes that can sustain a coffee roaster in the market and that is why there is a need to aggregate clean coffee in a mill.

Do we need private coffee mills? Oh, yes! They are important. So long as they are licensed as per our regulations, they will serve the sector well. One of the private mills serves farmers well when the volumes in the union mills are high, making it impossible to mill the coffee in time. Most of the time there is urgency to mill and offload the coffee to the market since the farmers want their coffee sold so that they can meet their domestic and farm expenses.

Some counties have licensed mills that are associated with coffee-buying companies. This should not happen next year. It is commendable that some millers have voluntarily stopped milling to concentrate with coffee trading as required by the coffee regulations.

My prayer is that we don’t relax the rules that we have used to ensure compliance with the 2019 coffee regulations.

But we have also messed up. A hot topic that has been avoided by all of us is the investment made by the coffee mills that were denied licenses due to conflict of interest. I am sure the owners know what they should have done to acquire the licenses. One way would be to give part ownership to farmers' representatives. This has happened before.

The challenge the farmers’ unions will have in the short run is the low coffee volumes, making their cost management a tough challenge. But with the reforms, the farmers have an opportunity to take charge of their coffee business.

The government and the regulations are supporting the farmer to have more say in the coffee business. We need to apply for the Commodities Fund and Cherry Advance Fund to boost production and make our mills sustainable. When we have adequate production, we will have enough coffee parchment for all the players, be it the unions, private millers, brokerage companies and every other player in the market.

Coffee milling is no hard science, and the farmer can do it with no struggle. Finally, the production of 2 kilogrammes per tree will not sustain your dry mill and will most likely send it to an early grave and the farmer back to the bitter past.