COMMENT: The Coffee Drive and the Politics of Opportunism

How many coffee commentators have read the Coffee Bill? Listening to the myriad of commentaries in the media, it is clear, a bulk of these coffee “expert commentators” have not read the Bill or if they did, they picked nothing out of the text.

What is the crime in regulating coffee production and marketing as part of the value chain? If every policy issue is viewed using political and tribal lenses, then the agriculture modernization mantra should be viewed as white noise.

Why should regulation be laced with tribal undertones in a specific region, yet coffee is widely grown countrywide? The import of the Bill is to make our coffee competitive on the world market but at the same time try to achieve our set target of 20 million bags in the near future. To achieve this, certain deliberate and well-calculated actions must be taken throughout both production and value chain, starting from planting to coffee in the cup ready to drink.

A clear show of lack of depth about the Bill is the commentators’ confusion between registration and licensing. Under clause 35 of the Bill, it is clear who will be licensed by the authority: pulpy operators, coffee buyers, coffee graders, coffee processors, coffee exporters, coffee roasters, brewers and coffee shops, coffee warehousing and coffee hullers.

The Bill under part IV clauses 26, 27 and 28 only seek to register coffee farmers all over the country for a sole purpose of ensuring supervision and quality control right from the start and also possibly assistance when required.

It is a deliberate task that is in line with international market dictates. The registration is free. It is evident that there is a clear distinction between registration and licensing.

Surprisingly, some personalities who are better placed to internalize legal texts and interpret them are making statements that are wayward. The registration of coffee farmers should not be seen as an isolated policy, milk, beef, cocoa, vanilla farmers are registered, purely for quality assurance.

It is false and irresponsible for some people to insinuate that the Bill targets a particular tribe, the question here is if at one point in history a certain region was famed for coffee and banana growing what happened to it that now it is struggling to find a footing in their production? Something must have gone wrong, that must be addressed through regulation.

As we strive to have a strong footprint on the international stage of the agricultural market, it calls for a radical departure from the laissez-faire attitude of traditional farming to modern and well-regulated farming. To understand the complexities surrounding marketing coffee on the world scale, one needs to read and understand the international coffee organization (ICO) minimum standards for coffee export as indicated in the (ICO) resolution No.407/02 of 2002. It is clear all member countries must account for the quality of coffee right from the farm to the international market.

We have had our fruits, vegetables, fish, and flowers rejected several times, because of farm gate poor handling. It is only after stringent measures have been adhered to, that the ban has been lifted.

This applies to coffee and since we have made coffee our flagship, with an ambitious target of 20m bags, that arduous journey must be buttressed in strict quality control. This should apply to all our products whether for domestic or export markets. We are not known to be ardent drinkers of coffee as a country, maybe that is why we don’t know the quality deserving the export market, we are competing with countries that have made coffee their lifeline, the only advantage we have is that we have a comparative advantage over them, that is why we are still hanging in there, otherwise in terms of quality, we could play second fiddle.

Agriculture is the bedrock of our industrialization strategy, to achieve this, there is a need to enact a regulatory framework that cascades the different stages of production and the value chain. Any attempt by political opportunists, who think that they can clutch at any policy decision, give it negative publicity, in the vain hope of making political mileage out of that negative energy, must be thwarted.

It is common knowledge that some farmers pick raw coffee beans, mix them with good coffee from other farms without paying attention to the effect such action renders to the overall quality of coffee at the export stage. Since our coffee comes from smallholder farmers, it is hard to ensure homogeneous quality from thousands of producers, however, if they are faced with the threat of rejection at the farm gate then they can maintain a minimum regulatory standard to be competitive.

One of the reasons why produce prices fluctuate on the world market is the failure to ensure quality right from the farm. A case in point is vanilla, because of a good price, farmers ended up mixing vanilla leaves with the stems and led to prices to palmate.

It was after vanilla exporters put stringent conditions that quality was realized. This can be replicated in all other products including coffee. It is not fair to send a mixed signal to our peasants, who take messages from certain quarters as gospel truth. Some institutions have a big sway and leverage over the locals, it shouldn’t be prudent to make statements that are not well packaged or else we lose the bigger picture than settling old scores.