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    The value of farm vis­its in up­ping your farm­ing game

    farmers benchmarking

    In­stead of wait­ing so long for planned ag­ri­cul­tural events like field open days, an­nual Ag­ri­cul­tural So­ci­ety (ASK) shows and ag­ri­cul­tural trade fairs, some groups of farm­ers now re­sort­ing to mak­ing tours to other farm­ers and ag­ri­cul­tural firms and in­sti­tu­tions for learn­ing, ex­pos­ure and ex­per­i­en­cing dif­fer­ent ways of farm­ing.


    This quest for more prac­tical en­gage­ments among farm­ers through see­ing, hear­ing and touch­ing has promp­ted farm­ers from Bokeira Ward in Nyamira County through the um­brella of Kilimo Bora Pub­lic Private Part­ner­ship farm­ers’ group send their rep­res­ent­at­ives to bench­mark at Kapro­ron Centre of Ex­cel­lence in Bomet County meet­ing Real Farm­ers Group.


    “Bench­mark­ing al­lows us room to visit our col­leagues at our own time and learn what they are doing dif­fer­ently and ex­cel­ling in that we can apply in our areas too,” Said Milton Patrice, who lead del­eg­ates from Bokeira Ward to Kapro­ron Centre.


    “We are also set to see what other farm­ers in Sagana, Na­k­uru, Kericho, El­doret, Kir­inyaga, Nairobi and Baringo among other re­gions if time allow,” he added.

    READ ALSO: Ag­ri­cul­tural centre trains over 1, 800 farm­ers yearly for free

    READ ALSO: Nandi farm­ers re­ceive Ksh. 2.5 mil­lion pesti­cides to fight army worms

    READ ALSO: Kenyan Farm­ers to get con­nec­ted to the World’s Largest Peer-to-Peer Farmer Know­ledge Shar­ing Net­work

    At kapro­ron centre, Bokeira farm­ers met their col­leagues in­clud­ing Simunya Women Group which do to­mato farm­ing using drip kit ir­rig­a­tion. Lead by Mr. Mutai Ki­prono, the farm­ers shared ag­ro­nomy ba­sics per­tain­ing their ag­ribusi­ness prac­tices.


    “Part­ner­ships and shar­ing are the order of the day. Suc­cess of Kapro­ron Centre of Ex­cel­lence has been about shar­ing not only with our farm­ers but also those from far,” said Mutai.


    In 2008 the cre­ation of KenyaGAP and its bench­mark­ing to GLOB­AL­GAP had sev­eral pos­it­ive im­pacts on the Kenyan hor­ti­cul­tural sec­tor. These in­clude the es­tab­lish­ment of the first local cer­ti­fic­a­tion body in East Africa, AfriCert Lim­ited, has not only cre­ated new jobs, but im­port­antly helped se­cure greater ac­cess to KenyaGAP and other in­ter­na­tional stand­ards in the East African re­gion by lower­ing the cost of ac­cess to cer­ti­fic­a­tion, and con­sequently to stand­ards ac­cord­ing to Trade Stand­ards Prac­ti­tion­ers Net­work.


    Again in April 2016 Tan­zania dairy farm­ers came bench­mark­ing in Kenya given the good policies and prowess in pro­cessing and dairy sec­tor man­age­ment in Kenya ac­cord­ing to Ipsos Syn­ovate.


    Ac­cord­ing to In­ter­na­tional Farm Man­age­ment Con­gress 2003, until bench­mark­ing is made easier and the be­ne­fits are more clearly demon­strated like by in­nov­a­tions such as present­ing data by cat­egor­ies which rep­res­ent the major con­straint faced by each farm­ers, it is un­likely many more farm­ers will use the tech­nique.


    In par­tic­u­lar, meth­od­o­lo­gies need to be stand­ard­ised, farm samples need to be more ro­bust and rep­res­ent­at­ive, fewer but bet­ter sur­veys should be sup­por­ted, and more pro­cess based in­form­a­tion needs to be presen­ted in the final re­port.

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