Our first stop was at Barichu Farmers Cooperative Society Ltd is situated in Karatina town, apprx.150 kms from the capital city of Kenya, Nairobi. It has 5,017 total active members.
All of them are small-scale coffee farmers with an average of 150 coffee bushes per farm.
These farmers really on coffee production for their livelihood.
Alongside coffee, they practise subsistence farming of maize and beans.
We met the Chairman Mr.Wachira Mwago, a few days after we arrived in Kenya. We took our Kenyan team from
Kedovo organisation as they are the youth group that facilitates the Program of sustainable coffee farming for my community. They had been doing a splendid job for over a year, and we was ready to hear and see the impact of their work among the communities. We also needed to ship a full container load from Barichu Cooperative.
We do not purchase the coffee from the Auction, we deal direct with the Cooperatives through the Direct Trade method as gazetted by the minister for Agriculture n 2006. That way we can pay our farmers a much higher price for their work....we work together towards sustainability for these communities.
We had a long discussion with Wachira on Organic coffe growing solutions etc.
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