July 18, 2014
MURANG’A, Kenya (Thomson Reuters Foundation)
– Coffee, once a reliable cash crop in Kenya, has been hard hit by the
country's erratic weather patterns. Some farmers have swapped to more
climate-resistant crops; others struggle through, making barely enough to live
on.
But for a growing number of Kenyan coffee
farmers, an insurance plan that protects their harvest against losses to
extreme weather and weather-related ailments is making coffee growing a less
bitter experience.
In collaboration with international
institutions such as the Foundation for Sustainable Development, the World
Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation and the U.K.'s Department for International
Development, Kenyan insurance companies have over the past few years put in
place index-based weather insurance to provide a financial cushion for farmers
who lose crops due to flooding, drought, or other climate-linked disasters.
“Agriculture insurance is particularly
important in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa today as extreme weather patterns
generated by climate change are introducing greater volatility to food
production and food prices,” said Wilson Songa, Kenya’s principal secretary for
agriculture.
Since the scheme was launched in 2011,
hundreds of Kenya's farmers have reaped the benefits.
Last year Peter Chege, a farmer from
Gacharaigo village in central Kenya, lost his harvest to coffee berry disease,
a common ailment caused by a fungus, after his farm experienced heavy rainfall.
But as a member of the insurance scheme, he was compensated for the loss,
meaning the damage wasn’t financially devastating.
"Coffee output is poor here because of
diseases brought on by changes in weather,” said Chege. “Even when we are not
so badly hit, we must still buy chemicals to spray against these diseases, and
most of us cannot afford them."
Two decades ago, Kathuni Ntaari’s farm would
have been teeming with activity during the coffee-harvesting season. Villagers
would swarm Ntaari’s home because he was known to pay generously anyone who
sought casual work at his coffee farm.
Today, however, the graying elder painfully
picks the berries alone, barely able to earn enough to provide three meals a
day for his family.
At its peak in the mid-1980s, coffee was one
of the best paying farm investments in Kenya, with the country exporting up to
130,000 tonnes every year.
But since then, variations in weather
conditions have seen a sharp decline in coffee output. Now Kenya has around
170,000 acres of land under the crop, producing about 50,000 tonnes annually.
‘I WAS ONCE RICH.. BUT NOT ANYMORE’
“I was once rich because of coffee, but not
anymore," said Ntaari. “But I cannot leave it because I still hope it will
once again be a money making crop.”
Such determination is rare in Ntaari’s
village in Muiru, eastern Kenya. A number of his desperate neighbours have
cleared their coffee bushes to plant staple crops such as maize and beans. For
those who have stayed with coffee, the pinball income the crop generates is
largely used simply to cover basics such as food and school fees.
As Kenya’s population grows, more farmers do
not have enough land to grow sufficient staple foods, said Dennis Maina, a
field officer working with partners such as the plant-science company Syngenta
East Africa to decide how the coffee-insurance scheme should be distributed.
Those that do sometimes “suffer crop failure due to climate-linked tragedies
like landslides and frost," he added.
Devoting a small portion of their earnings to
insurance can help some Kenyan coffee farmers move on from mere survival and
get a steadier profit from coffee, Maina said.
“All a farmer needs to enlist with the
scheme is a piece of land, coffee, and some savings to buy the premium,"
he said. “But there are challenges, such as establishing how much premium a
farmer should pay per acreage as well as what should be paid to farmers
depending on how bad a season has been."
THE PROBLEM OF MICROCLIMATES
Figuring out the correct cost of coverage is
made more difficult by Kenya's microclimates, pockets of weather - some
measuring just a few kilometres - that differ from the climates of the
surrounding areas.
Chege’s village, for example, is chilly at
the time of year when the coffee is flowering while Ntaari's village, about 200
kilometres away, sits in searing heat.
According to a 2012 report
on index-based weather insurance by Adaptation to Climate Change and Insurance,
a bilateral project between the Kenyan and German governments, the temperature
extremes are detrimental to the coffee crops in both villages.
The Arabica bean, which accounts for 99
percent of Kenya’s coffee, requires temperatures in the range of 18 degrees
Celsius to 21 degrees Celsius for optimum production, the report says. Above
that, the coffee can develop tumours and shed flowers resulting in depressed
yields. Temperatures below the threshold can lead to diseases such as coffee
berry disease.
With microclimates causing wildly varying
temperatures across small areas all over Kenya, insurers are still struggling
to develop effective index insurance, which usually relies on payouts being
triggered after a certain temperature or rainfall threshold is reached.
Vincent Nduati, of UAP Insurance, said coffee
insurance currently relies primarily on rainfall data to determine payouts.
But even the currently flawed system is
proving a lifeline for farmers who refuse to give up on coffee.
“Coffee insurance is good because even when
output is low I am assured of something to fall back on to maintain the crop
until the next harvest,” Chege said.
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Kagondu Njagi is a freelance contributor for
the Thomson Reuters Foundation, based in Nairobi and writing on climate change
issues.
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