The market for Stevia is set to increase at three times the pace of most other herbs and spices in the next five years as consumers demand a natural and healthier replacement for regular sugar which causes high blood pressure, weight gain, diabetes, and liver disease.
According to a HealthFocus International 2024 study, for 56 per cent of consumers, it is extremely important that foods and drinks have no artificial sweeteners. This is because the refined sugar on most of our tables is a sweet killer that exposes us to a higher risk of being affected by exploding lifestyle diseases such as stroke, heart disease obesity, type II diabetes, and cancer. Packing a punch that is 400 times sweeter than table sugar, stevia is the perfect natural sugar substitute that caters to our sweet tooth while not compromising our health. In the last five years 26.7 per cent of all food and drinks made with a substitute to sugar contained stevia.
According to the Stevia Kenya company, herbal clinics and patients who suffer from diabetes provide the best market for smallscale farmers in Kenya to cash in on stevia.
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The crop’s leaves can be bought as ground stevia powder from supermarkets such as Carrefour as well as Nairobi’s health and herbal shops such as Mara Organics, Kalonji Online, and Viahealth and is used for baking, and in sweetening drinks as well as desserts and sauces.
Stevia was the crop on everyone’s mind a few years ago when the world’s second-largest soft drink maker began using it as a sweetener in Coca-Cola Stevia. The herb however took some reputational damage when a 1991 study that claimed it might be linked to cancer resurfaced as well as Coca-Cola discontinuing its 100 per cent stevia-sweetened range of soft drinks in 2020 on account of customer complaints and poor sales.
In Kenya, the sweet herb also brought bitter tears to many who were introduced to it through Joseph Mulupi Musuya of Out-growers Management Services Limited who guaranteed farmers Sh300,000 per acre in returns in 2016 once they had invested Sh87,000 in leasing an acre from 100 acres of land in Uashin Gishu to grow the crop. Mulupi made out with millions from farmers who invested in the scheme.
Despite all this, the sweetener has only grown in popularity. Today, about 479 tons of stevia is used to make beverages alone. It is also in great demand in the making of confectionary, candies, chewing gums, sauces, and sweetening tablets.
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According to Informa Markets, the global stevia market is predicted to grow to 1.36 billion dollars by 2029 at a 12.1 per cent annual growth rate. This is fuelled by its use as a zero-calorie natural sweetener in the food and beverage industry which promotes healthier eating and manages blood sugar levels. This naturally avoids the development of ballooning lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, as well as heart, kidney, nerve, and eye diseases.
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