Kirinyaga coffee producers expect a healthy harvest after the Capital Markets Authority licensed Kirinyaga Slopes Coffee Brokerage Company Limited and 14 others as coffee brokers.

Other cooperative societies affiliated with Kirinyaga County Cooperative Union could sell their coffee directly to Nairobi Coffee Auction Market purchasers.

PHOTO | COURTESY coffee farmer

Kirinyaga Senator Kamau Murango, who also chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, welcomed the move, saying farmers in his county are about to reap the benefits of reforms in the coffee subsector envisioned in proposed changes to the product's marketing and sale stages.

The senator added that Despite everything that has happened, they now have brokers and can put their coffee on the market.

PHOTO | COURTESY coffee

CMA chairman Wycliffe Shamiah applauded the decision. He said that the momentum of the reform agenda must be sustained to ensure full implementation of the Capital Markets regulations in relation to coffee changes.

Capital Markets Authority notes that 14 coffee brokerage companies run by farmers through cooperative societies around the country have so far been established following the government's purge to rid the country of "rogue marketers and brokers" who feasted on farmers' sweat and blood.