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    Farm­ers crack re­gional mar­kets with ground­nuts

    Farm­ers in Uk­wala area of Siaya county are count­ing in­creased earn­ings with a ground­nut pro­ject that has shiel­ded them from low yields and poor in­come from tra­di­tional farm­ing of maize and sorghum while fer­til­iz­ing their soils.

    The farm­ers have al­ways grown maize, sorghum, beans and mil­let for home con­sump­tion mainly in the form boiled snacks and a mix­ture of maize and beans. The little sur­pluses are sold to meet daily house hold re­quire­ments, such as sugar and par­affin. But a pro­ject by the Kenya Ag­ri­cul­tural Pro­ductiv­ity Pro­gramme has changed the farm­ers’ for­tunes. They have had a mind shift on how they farm and have turned to ground nut farm­ing as a busi­ness ven­ture.

    Strategy

    The pro­gramme of­fi­cials worked with the com­munity mem­bers to form Com­mon In­terest Groups (CIGs) based on the farm­ers in­terest on en­ter­prises of their own choice. Up to 94 com­mon in­terest groups were formed. The Ra­jenya Farm­ers Group is one of the ninety four CIGs that were formed.

    Through this group, farm­ersin Siaya have been in­tro­duced to the concept of pro­du­cing ground­nuts as a busi­ness under the guid­ance of two ser­vice pro­viders, Ms. Be­atrice Awuor and Mr. Charles Oloo. The ser­vice pro­viders to­gether with group mem­bers in a par­ti­cip­at­ory plan­ning work­shop iden­ti­fied the weak points in the ground nut value chain that needed to be ad­dressed.

    Chal­lenges iden­ti­fied in­cluded dis­eases, low yield­ing vari­et­ies, poor ag­ro­nomic pack­ages, lack of qual­ity seed, low pro­du­cer prices, lack of ac­cess to credit, lack of mar­kets and mar­ket in­form­a­tion, low ad­op­tion of ap­pro­pri­ate tech­no­lo­gies, poor pre and post har­vest hand­ling tech­niques that res­ul­ted in major losses, and lack of value ad­di­tion tech­no­lo­gies. Other chal­lenges in­cluded low soil fer­til­ity, late plant­ing by farm­ers as pri­or­ity is given to maize, sorghum and beans as food se­cur­ity crops, and dam­age at plant­ing by ants as well as bird dam­age at ger­min­a­tion.

    Kenya Ag­ri­cul­tural Pro­ductiv­ity Pro­gramme as­sisted the farm­ers with a grant that was used to pro­cure a ground­nut shelling ma­chine, a roaster and a pea­nut but­ter mak­ing ma­chine to pro­cess ground nut into pea­nut but­ter. The group pro­duces and sells pea­nut but­ter. The Group has also ac­quired the Kenya Bur­eau of Stand­ards cer­ti­fic­a­tion and the bar cod­ing and are selling pea­nut but­ter in the local su­per­mar­kets in the area. Profits range between Sh800, 000 and Sh2­mil­lion from the sale of the pea­nut but­ter.

    The ground­nut story has been very suc­cess­ful and this has really pro­moted me as a ser­vice pro­vider. I now provide ser­vices to other groups and even to NGOs on pro­duc­tion and value ad­di­tion. Siaya farm­ers have em­braced ground­nut farm­ing as a busi­ness’ said  Mr. Oloo, the ser­vice pro­vider.

    Mem­ber­ship

    At in­cep­tion, the group had an im­press­ive mem­ber­ship of 200 but when handouts were not forth­com­ing, mem­ber­ship thinned out and has sta­bil­ized at one hun­dred and ten with sixty four women and forty six men act­ively par­ti­cip­at­ing in ground­nut pro­duc­tion and pro­cessing.

    The group is re­gistered as Ra­jenya Grow­ers Com­pany and is man­aged through four sub-com­mit­tees com­posed of elec­ted of­fi­cials. These are the ex­ec­ut­ive, pro­cure­ment, asset and fin­ance sub-com­mit­tees.

    Al­most every homestead has a plot of ground­nuts as the mar­ket is guar­an­teed. Farm­ers out­side the CIG have also ad­op­ted these tech­no­lo­gies and are selling their pro­duce to this com­pany. The group mem­bers en­vi­sion a farm­ers’ pea­nut but­ter fact­ory cap­able of sup­ply­ing the local and the in­ter­na­tional mar­kets.

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