The rain season has finally begun!
Although we are not so sure whether to be happy with it or not. For the farmers we are, but for ourselves…
Wednesday we forgot to tell you about an interesting finding:
In the Netherlands, there are multiple
websites on which you can check the weather and the amount of rainfall that is
predicted*. After our presentation, we told the class that we often use that to check
before going outside whether we need to bring an umbrella to the university,
or what kind of clothes we need to wear.
We asked the classroom whether there is
anything like that in Kenya. The answer that we got was a lot of noise
and everyone started talking to each other in an enthusiastic way. So… no,
something like that is not yet present in Kenya. We explained about the
opportunities that such websites/apps will bring. For instance farmers could try to plan ahead. Of course, these websites just provide
information that is based on a prediction, but it is something to hold on to.
We think this opportunity must be
grasped.
So, what did we do the past 2 days? Yesterday, we went to CRF (Coffee
Research Foundation, currently reorganizing into the Kenyan Agricultural and
Lifestock Research Organization) and Solidaridad. When our taxi was trying to transfer us from
the first meeting to the second, we experienced a (for us) new problem In
Nairobi: traffic. Since this transfer took place during lunch hour, everyone
was trying to move from one place to another causing a lot of cars trying to
cross each other without any order. In other words: Chaos! Eventually we
arrived on the right place ‘only’ 30 minutes late. But as we learned earlier
today, that is no problem at all, Hakuna Matata.
The most informative part of the day was
our first walk on a real coffee farm. We saw, among other things, the different
kinds of coffee trees, pickers doing their work, shade grown coffee and
intercropping. It really helped us getting an idea of how things work on coffee
farms. CRF even has its own weather station, to do research with.
Furthermore we had very interesting
interviews with people from the two organizations we visited. On our way home the first rain of the season was falling, but it were only a few drops.
Today, on Friday, we had only one
meeting. This was at SMS ltd. (Sustainable Management Services Limited), as the
name already suggests this is a company providing services to create better
management at the coffee farms in cooperatives. When we got back to the hotel,
it started raining (big time) and it looked like the rain season had finally
begun! At this moment the thunder and the grey sky make it look like it is not
going to stop for the next few days, but we will see. As we have learned during
our interviews the weather can be very unpredictable in Kenya. Well, time to
experience this in real life.
Let us sum up the most interesting
findings up until now:
Climate related problems:
·
Erratic rainfall. Farmers
cannot predict when it will start raining. This change is hard to grasp, since
the patterns are not shifting over time, but totally changing. This is not only
the case for coffee farmers but also for farmers of many other crops. Because
of this uncertainty they do not know when to start planting or harvesting.
·
Longer dry spells that come
along with the erratic rainfalls form a problem too, because many crops need periods of rainfall lasting a few weeks
after being planted. Dry spells can ruin the plants when they appear soon after
planting.
·
Kenya is divided into only four
meteorological regions. Because of this, farmers cannot receive area specific
information on how the weather will look like on their farm.
General problems:
·
Most of the coffee farmers in
Kenya are aged (60 years old on average). Some problems that come along with this age are
conservativeness or unwillingness to adapt to changes younger people (researchers)
suggest to them. A way of convincing these farmers is by proving that these suggestions
really work, for example with a (chosen) leading farmer within a cluster of
farmers.
·
Most coffee farms are led by
men, but mainly women are the ones that work on them. This means that
the men will receive the payment, which causes the women being less involved in
the results of their work.
·
The farmers do not drink (their) coffee
themselves. This makes it impossible for them to rate the quality of their own
coffee, since they do not know that this really makes a difference. When they
are aware of the value of this difference, they will put more energy in
cultivating good quality coffee in order to receive more money for it.
Even if the
farmers would be willing to drink coffee, it is too expensive for them to try.
Coffee itself, but also the coffee machines are unaffordable for them.
·
The perception of coffee being
a cash crop instead of a food crop makes coffee less popular for farmers. They
will not immediately receive positive results of their investments in coffee,
while for example if they would cultivate maize they immediately see food (or
money) appearing after the harvest.
Well, apart from this information we
learned a lot more this first week in Nairobi. The processing of this
information will take a bit longer than writing this blog, so stay tuned!
*
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