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Tea farmers urged to embrace new production practices
- Details
- Published on Monday, 24 November 2008 10:18
Monda called for consultative working relations among farmers and agricultural extension officers to achieve quality yields that attract high unit payments. He urged farmers from the area and its surroundings to increase acreage in tea production saying that the new factory needed enough green leaves for processing once the plant is commissioned in two years' time.
Irate farmers in parts of the country have been reported to have uprooted their crop to push the KTDA into increasing payment per kilo of leaf delivered. But the Legislator discouraged farmers against abandoning their farms or uprooting perennial cash crops observing that prices of most export commodities go in tandem with the dynamics of major world currency exchange rates which has affected the unit payment for farmers.
Monda maintained that improvement of the output would improve farmers' financial status and not uprooting the crop. "Instead of angrily uprooting the crop that has been tended for years on impulse, farmers should improve on their husbandry and increase their acreage to bridge the deficit occasioned by low pay," he said. Monda was speaking at Rianyamwamu in his constituency where he presided over the ground breaking ceremony for the proposed Mwamu Tea factory.
The proposed factory is aimed decongesting Kiamokama tea factory in Masaba and providing of better services for farmers in Nyaribari chache. currently, tea farmers from the area have to contend with uncollected leaves at buying centres owing to the area covered by the existing factory.
