Stanley GazembaInyali, Chavakali, in Western Kenya, farmers are abandoning tea farming, a crop that has sustained centuries of imperial British power and has remained Kenya primary export crop, but owned by British multinationals and presently Private Equities.
The colonial crop has been unable to shed its extractive nature, fixing prices through gatekeeping brokers that has left farmers no choice but to exit this market, for alternatives as free people.
Some of the farmers are switching to growing nappier grass and rearing cows instead just as their ancestors did.
In the fullness of time, the inconsistencies of colonial agriculture is no longer making sense; a country that is 80 percent desert should not be growing flowers for Dutch noses, Tea for the Kings’ people and hybrid maize for the surplus American corn empire, yet we have mouths to feed.
The great-grandchildren of Africans who were pushed out of their ancestral land to pave way for the British and its addiction to the acquired taste of tea, may finally be ending empire.
Stanley Gazemba
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