| dc.description.abstract | Tea also known as Camellia Sinensis is grown in a total of 36 countries around the world. The most famous tea producing countries are India, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Japan and Taiwan. Kenya became the world's third largest producer and leading exporter of black tea in the year 1995. Most of the small scale tea growers are at the bottom of the supply chain, relegated and neglected, with no say in decision making and therefore little share in profits got from the tea sales.
The relationship of small scale tea growers and the players in the tea sector at the higher levels (i.e. Factory, KTDA, Tea Board of Kenya and the Tea Research foundation of Kenya) is not well understood. Why there are erratic and fluctuating tea payments, is what the study sought to investigate. The research project sought to determine the factors that influence financial returns on small scale tea growers in Kenya.
The project looked at the market forces, the Board of Directors, the productions costs and the government policies as some of the factors influencing the returns on the small scale tea growers. The research took the case ofMichimukuru Tea Factory Company Limited in the Meru North region. The factory has about 9000 farmers and the research took a sample of 120 growers from 10 buying centres. The study has revealed that there are several factors that influence the financial returns apart from the cost of production, market forces, the Board of Directors, and the government policies.
The study is useful in the tea industry as the management can use it to adopt cost-effective measures to enhance the financial returns on the small scale tea growers. The target population where the data was collected was the Board of Directors, the factory management, and small scale tea growers. The research used survey design where simple random sampling was used to select the respondents among the growers and stratified sampling method among the rest of the respondents.
Questionnaires and interview schedules were the main data collection instruments. The collected data was analyzed using frequencies, percentages and ratios. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 10.0 programmes was used to analyze the data. The findings, discussions, conclusions and recommendations were then made and areas for further studies were recommended. | en_US |
