JM So­cial Icons

    Kenya's first sweet potato pro­cessing plant to raise Migori farmer’s earn­ings 

    Migori sweet potato preocessing plant

    By George Munene

    Kenya's first sweet potato pro­cessing plant loc­ated in Migori county is sched­uled for com­ple­tion by the end of the year. The Sh110 mil­lion Getonganya sweet potato fact­ory is ex­pec­ted to offer the crop’s cul­tiv­at­ors a ready mar­ket and a bet­ter price for their crop. 

    Sweet potato pro­duc­tion em­ploys over 6,500 farm­ers in the Kuria re­gion who pro­duce close to 0.3 mil­lion tonnes of sweet pota­toes yearly. Min­istry of Ag­ri­cul­ture data also shows that Migori County is Kenya's second-largest pro­du­cer of the in­ter­na­tion­ally sought-after or­ange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP), with 11,312 hec­tares under its cul­tiv­a­tion. Neigh­bour­ing Homa Bay County is the coun­try's largest pro­du­cer at 24,268 hec­tares.  

    Re­lated News: Local & ex­port de­mand for or­ange fleshed sweet potato grows with su­per­food clas­si­fic­a­tion

    Re­lated News: Ag­ritech star­tup giv­ing mar­ket to small-scale ba­nana, pump­kin, sweet potato, ar­row­root & yam grow­ers

    Con­struc­ted on five acres at Mabera sub-county, Kuria West, the plant is ex­pec­ted to pro­cess over 100 tonnes of sweet pota­toes daily; this will en­able farm­ers to in­crease their pro­duc­tion area. 

    The plant’s open­ing was sched­uled for July last year but was scuttled by delays oc­ca­sioned by the Covid-19 pan­demic.

    “This Covid-19 thing has really taken us back. Our people would be en­joy­ing the sweet and medi­cinal bread made from their own crops. That not­with­stand­ing, jobs, good prices for their pota­toes, and a good busi­ness en­vir­on­ment will be cre­ated by the fact­ory,” the county’s gov­ernor, Okoth Obado said.

    Sweet pota­toes will be pro­cessed into flour, bis­cuits, and crisps.

    The plant will offer farm­ers a ready mar­ket as well as bet­ter value for their crop. This will lessen the broker strangle­hold on the sweet potato ag­ri­cul­tural sub-sec­tor. Rising de­mand, farm­ers hope, will also raise the tuber’s price. 

    Re­lated News: Proper plant­ing for over 10 tonnes from acre of sweet pota­toes

    The Migori Sweet Potato Value Chain Stake­hold­ers Forum is work­ing to build the ca­pa­city of stake­hold­ers in the crop’s value chain, en­sur­ing that there will be min­imal hic­cups in the fact­ory’s run­ning once its en­gines roar.

    The fact­ory was fun­ded by the European Union to the tune of Sh100 mil­lion, with the na­tional gov­ern­ment foot­ing the rest of the bill and provid­ing land for its con­struc­tion.

    Com­ments (0)

    RSS
      At­tach im­ages by drag­ging & drop­ping or by se­lect­ing them.
      The max­imum file size for up­loads is 10MB. Only gif,jpg,png files are al­lowed.
       
      The max­imum num­ber of 3 al­lowed files to up­load has been reached. If you want to up­load more files you have to de­lete one of the ex­ist­ing up­loaded files first.
      The max­imum num­ber of 3 al­lowed files to up­load has been reached. If you want to up­load more files you have to de­lete one of the ex­ist­ing up­loaded files first.
      Post­ing as

      Com­ments powered by CCom­ment

      Ed­itor's Pick

      All News

      Powered by mod LCA
      Farm­Biz Africa © 2020