A few firsts

Again, a blog with firsts…

 

We finally saw Mount Kenya! When visiting the Dedan Kimathi University of Technology (DeKUT, kind of funny for the Dutchies) we entered the parking lot after our meeting, and wow, there it was. The mountain starts very flat and then all of the sudden it rises high in the air. The location of this university was beautiful again; we really took into questioning what the Kenyans would think about our campus.

And then, the field work part of our research started! On Friday we visited two farms of the Mutheka cooperative in Nyeri. We started at the factory Kamanyu, after which we visited one of their farms during the morning. In the afternoon we went to the Chorong’i factory and completed the day at one of their farms.

At the university we met Regina, a coffee expert and Q(-uality) grader who will accompany us while visiting the farms as our interpreter, for in case the farmers only speak Kiswahili or Kikuyu. She learned us about the multiple ways of brewing coffee: boiling, dripping, steeping and pressurizing. At the university they grow their own coffee and they process, package and sell it themselves as well. We drank one of the packages that arrived that day and brewed it through steeping, using the French press. The coffee was very nice!

Dan, of the division of research, technology management and community linkages helped us with his (positively) critical view on our research. At the end of the visits to the farmers, we would like to conduct a focus group with some farmers as well. This means having a group discussion with approximately five farmers at the same time, so that they can chip in on each other’s answers. This can help us in developing a solution for the problem together with them. Dan was very enthusiastic about this plan, so we hope we have time and the possibilities to arrange this as well. 

The information we are receiving from all the experts (companies but farmers as well) makes the main issue of our research more clear each time. If we are repeating some of the earlier findings in this blog, it is only because things have gotten even clearer for us.

What we noticed and learned most during the farm visits:

-          Both farmers we visited were around 60 years old, this confirms our literature and expert research.

-          The farmers were very welcoming to us, and one was even proud of the fact that we (as white researchers) were in his house.

-          They are very proud of Kenya, Kenyatta (the president) and of being a Kenyan that is cultivating coffee.

-          They own (smart)phones, televisions, radios and DVD-players. Note that it might be that we are only directed to the more wealthy farmers by the factories, but we were very surprised.

-          The non-availability of meteorological information; farmers do watch the news and weather predictions on television, listen to it on the radio and receive information from the factories, but this information is not accurate enough (highlighted by one of the farmers we spoke). If they want to receive more accurate information, they will have to request this at the meteorological station itself, but this rarely happens since the farmers simply do not know about this opportunity. Still the following questions arise: Is it even possible make long-term predications on rainfall periods? Is keeping track of micro climates more valuable than the climate of a very big area?
We think that we can come up with a combination of both, by putting the stations of TAHMO on the factory level of the cooperative.

-          The two farms we visited up until now, were both cultivating other (food) crops, like maize, bananas and macadamia nuts. They also owned cattle next to the coffee crops, like chickens and cows.

-          The smallholder farmers employ a maximum of two employees during the picking seasons.

-          One of the farmers did not know in which month what exactly should happen on his farm regarding the coffee. At the end of the interview we asked if he would prefer weather data/predictions or tasks that are based on these predictions, he answered he would prefer to receive the tasks to carry out.

-          As far as we have seen and heard from experts, most smallholder farmers do not use an irrigation system and thus have to fully rely on the rain.

These where our first findings, next week we have a busy schedule ahead of us. Each morning and each afternoon we have an appointment at a farm or with one of the managers, which means the evenings will be for finishing the documents and writing this blog J. If everything goes well, the week after we will try to do a focus group session. This means next week you can expect more detailed findings.