Arda farm exports tea to Germany

Arda-MushumbI farm has struck gold with its tea from the rosella plant, which it is exporting to Germany, a farm official Mr Aaron Jonas revealed.

He added that although the farm had a variety of competing crops for export like moringa, stevia and chillies, no crop has matched returns for rosella plant.

“Rosella plant is a type of a tea that we are producing at the farm, it is also known as rosella tea. We don’t have a local market for the plant. Last season we partnered 177 small-scale growers and we increase the number to 5 000. Next season we expect to grow the number to 10 000,” he said.

“For the outgrower scheme on rosella we pay US dollars US$0,85c per kilogramme plus US$0,50c per every kilogramme of seed. Per every kilogramme of leaves from a plant we get 2-3kg of seed. Meaning per every plant the farmer gets US$0,85c for leaves plus US$1,50 for the seed.

“We train our growers and we expect every farmer who properly plants rosella to produce a minimum of 600kg per ha. The crop takes 90 days to grow but it is not possible to grow the plant more than once per year because of the organic farming preparation like compost heap preparation.

“We have other competing crops but rosella plant is the highest paying crop. We have an overwhelming support of outgrowers who want to be part of the scheme.”

Mr Jonas added that they are planning on engaging outgrowers for chillies, moringa and stevia production.

“We are producing a variety of crops and the main crop is stevia. Stevia grows to about a metre and we harvest its leaves, dry them and bale them before exporting. The leaves are put through an extraction process to remove glycocide molecules which are used to produce sweeteners or natural sugar,” said Mr Jonas.

“We have planted chillies at our farm and this season we expect to produce 50 tonnes and they are for export. We expect to produce 60 tonnes of paprika. All our produce is for export we have a good export market in Europe.

“We have a good export market for moringa and we are planning to set up a moringa oil extraction plant in Kanyemba which will reach 180 000 litres per year. We currently have 50ha under moringa production which we want to increase to 200ha.

“We use organic methods that are in line with the European and American standards. We don’t use fertilisers, chemicals or herbicides in our farming methods.

“Currently, we are using 10 tonnes per hectare of manure as a substitute for fertiliser. We are using pheromone traps to control army and bore worms.”