Looking for two leaves and a bud. Participants to the 1st winter-school in Agri-Food choices meet the Kenyan tea farmers


(Baraka Agricoltural College, 25/01/2020 – Anna F. – Giulia Z.) The day starts with another exciting trip: the Baraka Agricultural College team gets ready to know a tea processing factory and meet small tea farmers. Trying to win against the time, we leave the Baraka Agricultural College earlier than the scheduled departure to make the most of the limited time available in these rich lands.
After two hours of travelling on the college bus surrounded by green landscapes, the Winterschool team reaches the Kiptagich Tea Factory. A team of proud employers of the Kiptagich Factory is waiting for the students, so dressing them with a white coat and a mask, and divided them in two groups: the participants are now ready for the factory tour. The two groups get to see all the steps of the tea processing.
The process starts with the collected leaves, 65% of which are coming from small and middle scale farmers and 35% from fields owned by the factory. The factory decides the price according to the quality of the leaves. They’re looking forward two leaves and a bud. Then the process of withering starts to reduce the moisture of the leaves to guarantee the aroma. Now it’s time for the CTC: Cutting Tearing and Crushing - this process takes about 40 minutes. Passing to the oxidation area, the fermentation process of the tea is starting and the cut leaves change the color from green to dark brown.
In the drying area the humidity of the tea is reduced from 50% to 3% and the black tea is ready to be separated according to the particle size. Finally the black tea is ready for packaging, either for the export market or for local market. Now ASIS tea (meaning “sun” in swahili) is ready to be sold.
Lunch time is coming for the Winterschool team that reaches Nancy’s house within an amazing view on tea fields. Nancy is a family’s mother and a teacher that is collaborating with Slow Food to improve the cultivation of the tea small farmers in this area trying to follow a more organic production. She kindly welcomes the participants in her house with a rich meal. At the end of the lunch Nancy surprises the team with an unknown traditional beverage: mursik, a kind of local acid yogurt processed starting from the goat’s milk.
The students have just the time to drink tea with milk sitting on the comfortable sofa of the house before greeting and be ready to keep going with the study trip.
Now they are directed to meet small tea farmers and to know their stories. Mr Johnson and Mr Routa tell then about the situation of tea sector in Kenya and especially the position of small tea farmers within the area. Small tea farmers sell their tee to the KTDA (Kenyan Tea Development Agency) and to big private companies; at the end these small tea farmers sell their tea production to brokers which process it and then sell it to them again on local market.
Coming back from this enriching experience, it is now the time to start working as teams on our local projects.

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