Machinery

: 27 March 2018; Hits: 11382

Nairobi Company launches mobile app to help dairy farmers maintain records

Farmers all over the country are set to benefit from the launch of a mobile app that will help them maintain their records.

The smart cow app which can be installed on smartphones will enable farmers monitor their expenditure and income and thus know whether the enterprise is making profit or losses for effective management.

A case study in 2016 for instance by David Kiprono of University of Eldoret , Martin Koome and Felista Lelei of Kenya Methodist University in Cherangani division, Trans Nzoia found that only 32 per cent of the farmers in the region kept farm records but did not use them efficiently in their farms while 68 per cent had no records.

App helps farmer predict his farming business

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“The app is programmed to remind farmers of daily routine management practices such as when a cow is supposed to be vaccinated, dewormed or served,” said Intersoft director, Levis Wambura.

The smart cow app is designed in a way that it is able to analyze the history of each and every animal including the production levels for milk.

With the app dairy farmers can also post and ask questions which will be answered by Intersoft’s experts and veterinary officers on farm management practices.

milk

In 2017, Kenya’s milk production dropped by 30 per cent as compared to 2016 to 3.64bn liters owing to prolonged drought according to the Kenya Dairy Board, the industry regulator.

Of the 3.64bn produced milk, only 535.5m liters was processed by 28 licensed milk processors and mini dairies down from 648.2m liters in the previous year.

Data from the Kenya Dairy Board also indicates that Kenya exported three million kilos of milk in 2017 up from two million kilos in 2016.

The country has approximate 1.8m smallholder dairy farmers who produce an average of seven to nine liters per cow per day against a potential of 20 liters. In this, the app may go a long way in helping farmers increase production through proper management of the cows for optimum productivity.

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: 21 March 2018; Hits: 8193

Local youth group reports saving on baking costs by using sunlight

Oven operator removing baked cakes from the solar five oven. Photo courtecy.

Misire Afmago Youth Group which owns Afmago Bakery is saving Sh3,000 monthly electricity bill by solar five oven which uses solar energy from sunlight taking about 45 minutes baking time as compared to over one hour using electricity.

The Nyamira County youth group which does value addition on banana and sweet potatoes to bake breads, pancakes and scones was wholly using electricity to bake their products and sometimes power could go off midway further lowering their production quality and quantity affecting their products’ performance in the market.

“Other than the high electricity bills, depending on electricity alone was very risky. In case of power blackout while baking, a single bread for example, which is normally produced as 400g end up produced as 300g or even 250g,” said Afro Ochieng, the group chairperson.

“This make us lose over 200g per bread thus instead of selling one bread at Sh45 as usual we are forced to reduce the price to about Sh20 because of the reduced size. The breads are also produced darker and not sparkling brown hence unattractive to customers.”

Other products like pancakes and scones which are produced as 180g each end up losing over 30g when the same problem occurs.

Solar five oven is easy to control as it has two wheels by which an operator can wheel it to face the direction of sunlight at any time. The operator can also observe the weather so that in case there is lack of enough sunlight, they can switch to charcoal oven or use electricity to avoid any effect.

“We have not fully forgotten other sources of energy especially this rainy season when it can be cloudy throughout the day and the solar oven may not be appropriate. We can therefore switch to charcoal oven or electricity to continue with the production,” said Ochieng.

The oven is a model with five square meters of mirror and can power a three-kilowatt oven at 200 degrees Celsius. This is by converting 1000 watts of radioactive energy per square meter (at noon on a clear day) present in sunlight to "usable heat energy" at about 60 per cent efficiency.

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“This is the technology that supplies green energy at low cost for thermal processes. The models comes in different capacities depending on the square metre mirror used,” said Collins Paul Obale, Afmago Bakery site manager.

“Whatever the model, this technology is capable of capturing direct solar energy and make it usable at low cost over a large temperature range which is up to up to 300°C of temperature.”

solar five bakery oven afmago youth group

A solar five oven. Photo courtecy.

According to Obale, this technology was introduced to the group in June 2016 by GoSol, a Tampere, Finland company in partnership with Word Vision organisation. The solar five oven was donated by Gosol to the group which was further given technical support.

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The GoSol project seen the technology built and installed for four groups such as Bao Beach group in Kisumu County, Koptige group in Nandi County and Yier Ngima group in Siaya County.

Afro can be reached on +254 721203669 while GoSol company can be accessed through www.gosol.org

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: 13 March 2018; Hits: 7510

App helps farmer predict his farming business

Farmer using smartphone

Palmer Mureithi, who is an accountant by profession, is using a free mobile phone application called ‘My Wallet’ to run the bookkeeping on his dairy and banana farming in South Imenti, Meru County. This helps him acknowledge worth of his farm, in planning budgets and in monitoring their financial progress.

He started using the app right from when he began farming in 2013 to enable him to best judge which direction to take his farming in future based on the performance of every farming activity.

“I stated keeping my farm records five years ago, when I started banana farming. I want to see where my business will be by 2020 and so my records must be straight and up-to-date,” said Mureithi.

“Agribusiness is just like any other type of business, which requires recordkeeping to enable investors in the sector track their operations for proper judgments on the future of their farm production and sales.”

For My Wallet, one has to log in using personal credentials to access the app. It generates summaries of budgets, bills, expenses and incomes based on the spending and receipts keyed into the app, which records financial statements, and the date and time of every transaction.

“I do not find it hard to use the app because of my background in accountancy. Any transactions I make related to my farming business I key in properly with dates and time to enable me to retrieve the information anytime and anywhere to check on my performances,” said Mureithi.

His investment capital in the banana and dairy farming has been over Sh2.2m. He bought some indigenous banana seedlings from a fellow farmer in the area but the bananas did not do well prompting him to buy about 1000 seedlings of tissue culture banana variety from Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) at Sh100 per seedling.

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Currently banana is occupying about six acres of his land.

He used the remaining amount to buy two mature Friesian cows and one Ayrshire cow, for around Sh120,000-Sh140,000 each, in October 2016. He now owns 10 cows, having later added five Friesian heifers of 6-18 months old, which he bought at Sh40,000-80,000 each.

“I want to purely rear Friesian cows because I find them easy to keep and they are more productive in terms of milk production. This means, the Asher types I have will be faced off slowly by crossbreeding,” said Mureithi.

Dairy is occupying one and a half an acre of his far where he also make silage for his animals from maize stalks, sunflower and molasses.

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