COFFEE was once Kenya’s biggest foreign-exchange earner, but these days the industry looks less perky. The country’s record, 127,000-tonne crop was all the way back in the 1987-88 season. Output plunged by 40% the following year, after the global coffee cartel axed its quotas, exposing the industry to competition. It has been falling ever since: last year it was less than 45,000 tonnes, a mere 0.5% of coffee production worldwide.
That is not for lack of quality. Kenya’s arabica coffee, grown in the highlands around Mount Kenya, is world-renowned, unlike the robusta produced in places like Vietnam and Brazil and used in instant granules. Domestic consumption is tiny, but growing by as much as 20% a year, as coffee-shop chains expand to cater to Kenya’s growing middle class.
That middle class also craves better housing, however, generating an insatiable thirst for land among developers. Nairobi’s property market is bubbling. The road between the capital and Thika, a town on the brink of being swallowed by its northern suburbs, is lined with coffee plantations that have been sold to developers. No one has bothered to pull up the...Continue reading
Source: Business and finance http://ift.tt/1UGmqUW
Share this
Related Posts
Enabling the addiction
TIME for equity investors to send Janet Yellen some champagne, or at least a bunch of flowers. Once again, markets are- Longer jail sentences do deter crime, but only up to a point
DO CRIMINALS trade short-term gain for long-term pain? Economists have long suspected that those who commit crimes pla
- The problem with profits
- Family's Universal Credit axed because of how dad was paid his wages
A FAMILY are struggling to pay for necessities before Christmas after missing out on their monthly Universal Credit p
EmoticonEmoticon