Abstract:
Kenya is the world’s third largest producer of tea after China and India. Tea plays a major
role in Kenya’s economy as it is the third major foreign exchange earner, behind tourism
and horticulture and employs approximately four million people. Over 96% of the tea
is produced and exported as black tea; largely for blending lower quality tea from other
countries, leading to low market prices. Coupled with the effects of changing climate, the
low prices have been threatening tea production. As a result, Tea Research Foundation
of Kenya (TRFK) has developed the purple tea clone (TRFK306/1) which is not only
high quality and high yielding but also drought, frost and diseases resistant. The release
of purple tea clone to farmers in 2011 was in response to the Vision 2030 and MediumTerm Plan (MTP) 2008-2012 which targeted new tea products diversification and value
addition so as to enhance tea productivity and to boost agricultural economic growth.
Unfortunately, the adoption of the purple tea by farmers has remained relatively low
with the awareness standing at 30%. To a large extent, this has been attributed to poor
marketing of the purple tea and inadequate processing plants for the product. The need
to enhance adoption potential on purple tea has therefore, led to emergence of researches
largely focusing on economic aspects such as marketing and establishment of processing plants. However, other important factors influencing adoption potential such as climate change and demographic characteristics of the farmers have received less attention. This study investigated the socio-demographic factors affecting adoption potential of purple tea in Nyeri County from a geographical perspective.
