Farmers in central Kenya have resorted to coffee hawking, blaming their societies for taking months to pay them. Poor payment, high prices of inputs and poor management have driven farmers over the edge to earn easy and desperately-needed cash from brokers. Experts however warn that the trend will relegate once big factories and societies to warehouses.

Several factories and cooperative societies in Mathira and Tetu constituencies, Nyeri County are on the brink of closure.  Mr John Kamau, a farmer in Mathira tends, to his coffee on a chilly Friday morning in Nyeri. He says coffee farming brings more pain than happiness as he continues to wallow in poverty despite the liberalisation of the industry years ago. “These coffee trees were planted by my father in the 1950s. He used its proceeds to send my siblings and I to school. Mr Kamau said the highest he had ever received from his cooperative in the last three years was Sh38 per kilogramme. “The societies keep shifting blame on us but they have failed us. "Farm inputs are too expensive for anyone earning Sh38 per kilo of cherry delivered to factories,” he said.