Ndumberi

Ndumberi has recently partnered with Progresso. With their assistance they have established a cupping lab. This is in an effort to sensitize their members on quality issues. The society too with assistance from Solidaridad has computerized their operations. They have participated at the SCAA conferences for the last three years including 2010 with assistance from various donors.

They are both Fair Trade and Utz Certified and continue to attract good prices. Last year they were able to upgrade their office facilities and built modern washrooms using their Fair Trade premiums. Their production has increased by more than 50% and prices have also increased by 50%. They are one of the pioneer cooperatives supported under the matching grant fund.

Kaliluni

Kaliluni FCS Secretary Manager in partnership with Fair Trade Organization of Kenya (FTOK) and Transfair of USA have just come back from the SCAA 2010. This is a demonstration of the impact the Matching Grant Fund has had on linking producers to the market. The Manager while there was vetted to represent Kenyan Fair Trade Certified producers at an international webcast in San Francisco as well as the SCAA Conference held in Anaheim California. He exhibited Kaliluni Coffeeat the Fair Trade Certified booth for three days. Out of all the international Fair Trade Certified producers that were chosen to represent their various countries in the webcast, three were selected and he was one of them. He represented Kaliluni and Kenya. During the conference he was also introduced to various key international coffee buyers. We hope they will begin to export direct and that they will feature in the international market place more http://transfairusa.org/blog/?p=2749

Coffee Farmers FLO certification programs have seen the society attract some of the best prices in the auction. The farmer capacity building was completed in 2007. It focused on extension services provision on a door-to-door basis. This personalized service seemed to have had excellent results in terms of improving quality as each framers strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats could be identified and necessary focused action taken. They have also adopted a culture whereby input purchase is based on soil and leaf analysis which has led to a great improvement in quality. Since September 2007, they have continually garnered the best price at the weekly coffee auction. The have also continued to be re- certified annually.

Kenya Coffee standards pilot project.
There are many certification programs that guarantee access to niche markets. However the certification process is long and expensive. The different niche markets tend not to be harmonized such that a farmer has to go through the different programs certification process to access the niche markets. The coffee apex committee initiated the Kenya Coffee Standards Pilot Project. This standard will be developed with assistance from relevant government institutions including Kenya Bureau of Standards, Coffee Board of Kenya, KIRDI, KCTA, farmers among others.

The KCTA

The Production of the Coffee Quarterly an activity under the KCTA project has continued to be published as a self sustaining publication.

The KCTA pilot project has been one of the pilot projects engaging all sector players. The project whose objectives was information collection & dissemination included collection of quarterly crop assessment statistics, a radio program run on radio citizen provided farmers with vital lessons on coffee growing while the 14 issues of coffee quarterly covered a wide range of important issues.

The crop assessments were undertaken by CRF. As a sustainability strategy under the leadership of CRF, a stakeholders forum including Ministry of Agriculture and central bureau of statistics have commenced an initiative to explore ways of continually generating this statistics and harmonizing statistics been released.