Introduction
The Coffee Development Fund (CoDF) is established under Section 34 of the Coffee Act No 9 of 2001 and its operations started in May 2006 when the Board of Trustees was gazetted. The purpose of the Fund is to provide sustainable affordable credit and advances to coffee farmers for the purpose of farm development, farm inputs, farming operations and price stabilization. The Fund’s Credit programme was launched by the Minister for Agriculture in February 2007.

Advances
These are short term loans repayable within the crop season which is not more than 12 months and include farm inputs and farming operations.

Farm inputs
Advances for farm inputs shall be for purchase of fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, farm equipment and tools.

Farming operations
These Fund include advances for cherry picking, farm labour, processing materials, factory maintenance, fuel, lubricants and general running costs and transport.

Modalities of disbursement
Intermediaries
The fund will disburse credit through Intermediaries and involve the management committees of coffee co-operative societies for effective and efficient supervision of credit.

Towards this end, the Fund will appoint the Intermediaries through competitive bidding based on their capacity and credibility to disburse credit in the coffee growing areas. Eleven (11) Intermediaries have been appointed and more will be appointed in 2007.

Those already appointed are Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), Embu Farmers, Gusii Farmers Rural, Meru Central Farmers, Taifa, Mathira Farmers,Nandi Farmers, Baringo Teachers, Meru South Farmers, Ntiminyakiru Rural and Meru North Farmers SACCO Societies.

Operations of Intermediaries
The intermediaries shall operate in accordance with a loan agency agreement signed with the Fund. They shall not only disburse credit to growers, but also recover and remit the proceeds of such loans to the Fund promptly.