Kericho farmer makes sugar replacement powder from legacy stevia plants

The plant had caused international excitement as a sugar replacement and was quickly adopted by Coca Cola as a sweetener. But it proved fiercely expensive to process, driving a chase for other ways to make it, and seeing Pure Circle finally abandon its Kenyan sourcing in 2018.

“Pure Circle came to our area in Kericho in 2010 and they trained us how we could farm stevia and they could buy it from us. It attracted most of us a lot because the payment was very good. They were the ones supplying us with the seedlings,” said Ken.

“But I know there was a little politics because the plant was gaining much traction in this area and farmers had started uprooting their tea, so that is why after 2018, they exit.”

Subsequently, the Kenyan tea estates owned by Pure Circle’s stevia partner James Finlays were bought by Sri Lankan company Browns Investments, which later bought the Lipton estates too, and has recently declared its intention to diversify beyond teas.

It is now buying stevia seeds from Ken, he said, raising his hopes that it may be moving to revive the sector.

But it is unlikely to earn as much as it did when stevia was at its peak.

“In my half an acre, every month I was getting Sh50,000 from every harvest and in a year you can imagine what my income was; over half a million,” said Ken.

“In 2018, when we had bulk buyers we were selling it at Sh150 per kg.”

Many of the farmers who were deeply involved in the farming have since had to scale down their production due to the lack of a ready market.

“The thing is we loved stevia as an alternative cash crop apart from tea, which is grown by a majority of farmers here,” said Ken.

But he has grown it continuously, only needing to renew his plants twice in the last 15 years.

“The good thing about stevia is that it does not wither easily, because, for over 15 years, I have continuously produced it and also learnt how to produce the seedlings, which I am selling to those interested in farming it.”

“Every month in my half an acre, I produce 400 kilograms of stevia and now I sell it at Sh250, but we can negotiate a little bit at Sh200.”

Ken sees interest growing in local sugar replacement, both by consumers and potential processors, and now earns from it locally that way.

“I currently produce powdered stevia sweetener by just crushing it using a mortar and pestle… selling it here in Kericho just to individuals using it as an alternative sugar,” he said.

The plant sweetens without the diabetes risk created by sugar and is also far cheaper for consumers.

Ground stevia leaves are around 10 times sweeter than sugar, and Ken sells a kg for around Sh200, whereas the 10 kgs of sugar needed to do the same amount of sweeting currently cost families over Sh1,500.

Ken and his fellow farmers are now looking actively for bulk buyers for processing.

“If I do not get a person who can buy it, I will try and venture into value addition just at the entry level packaging it as dried stevia tea,” he said. “I know that will be a good way to also make an income from it as we wait to get people buying it as fresh produce.”

But if interest now grows in the cheap sweetener, in such cash-poor times, “I will gladly do it and uproot all the tea in the other section, because the income from it is not something decent,” he said.

Together with the other farmers who are still growing stevia, “we are ready to supply the seedlings to other farmers around and continue with the production as we were doing it before,” he said.