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: 06 January 2020; Hits: 6047

Mango and French beans exporter buying the produce from out-growers

french beans ready for market

A Nairobi-based fresh produce exporter is seeking to grow farmers’ income this high season of mangoes and French beans (super or extra fine) by buying the produce for export to Middle East export markets where the demand for Kenyan fruits and vegetables is rising.

FarmGrown Kenya Limited which begun its operations in 2018 exporting fruits such as mangoes, passion and avocadoes to Middle East countries has increasingly earned supply demand in the international market.

“We have been exporting about eight tonnes of mangoes each to Arab countries but demands have been increasing from season to season forcing us to look for more farmers who can supply us with mango fruits and French beans,” said Frank Gathogo, FarmGrown Kenya Limited managing director.

Agnes Koti, the marketing officer at Mofarm Fresh Fruits Exporters Ltd said, in Africa, Kenya competes with Egypt in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and the United Arabs Emirates which are important markets for the country because the consumers in these countries are already aware of the high quality of the Kenyan vegetables and fruits.

In Kenya, the export season of French beans is from November to April while that of mangoes is from Dec–March in Eastern and Central Kenya, and from Nov–Feb as well as May–Aug at the coast.

FarmGrown is currently working with seven farmers who have a total of between 13 and 15 acres of land spreading across Kajiado and Ukambani counties. Before, the farmers used to sell their produce in the local markets which earns less income.

According to TechnoServe, an international nonprofit organisation, 90 per cent of the mangoes in Kenya are sold in the informal markets (vibanda) where prices are low while processors and exporters are left to compete over the remaining portion leading to supply shortage.

In this, FarmGrown is also seeking to contract out-growers who are willing to work with the company and train them on proper production practices to meet global standards.

“To keep our farmers up to the international standards, we have a team of five agronomists who engage the farmers in their production process to ensure the Global GAP is met.”

“This is the best way we ensure we satisfy our customers leaving them to demand for more each time.”

Gathogo further encourages the youth to take farming seriously and not as a gamble as it is a proven well-paying venture.

mango fruits

According to him, farmers from the dry regions in Kajiado, Makueni, Kitui and Machakos counties will be given first priority because most of the seasons depend on irrigation to produce their crops hence the produce are healthy and available all year round.

“As an expert in fresh produce production, farmers who depend on irrigation stand a high chance of steady farming and income throughout the year and to them, rain sometimes comes as a disruption as cases of pests and diseases breakout are rampant at the time,” said Gathogo.

He can be reached on +254 725320345.

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Friday, 23 October 2020 [quote=Peter]Can I sell my French beans to you as a group that we have created[/...

Monday, 19 October 2020 Can I sell my French beans to you as a group that we have created

: 20 December 2019; Hits: 7445

New study: Kenyan avocado farmers can increase income by 39 per cent exporting to EU

Kenyan avocado farmers can boost their income by up to 39 per cent by exporting the fruit to the European market.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based research institute and partners on their research report issued yesterday, a dozen of Hass avocado variety that sells for about Sh3.5 in domestic markets can fetch almost Sh6 in export markets.

However, small-scale Kenyan avocado farmers are typically unable to take advantage of the higher prices paid abroad due to insufficient capital, poor infrastructure and the high costs of meeting stringent export standards, the study finds.

Currently, the researchers note, only a few small-scale avocado farmers, mostly in Murang’a County in Central Kenya, are linked to export markets through contract farming.

Despite growing international demand, avocado exports from Kenya have been declining as a share of the total production of the crop.

That share now stands at 10 percent, far less than the export rate for avocado production in competitor nations such as South Africa and Chile, the study notes.

“Providing households access to foreign markets and up-to-date information on-farm technology, along with the dissemination of simple and domestically invented technologies, could achieve higher farm incomes, revenues and sales prices,” said Mulubrhan Amare, the study's lead author.

RELATED CONTENT: How to grow avocados for export

Avocado harveting

Workers parking harvested avocadoes in a track for transport. Photo courtesy.

In addition to raising small farmers' incomes, avocado exports bring higher pay for hired labourers, the researchers say.

Family labour inputs on avocado-exporting small farms increase by about 15 days a year, with female workers accounting for most of that addition, the study reports.

Based on survey data from large-scale avocado farmers in Kenya, the study found that those who participated in export markets were older and better trained than farmers who did not sell to foreign markets.

Farmers who exported also had higher likelihood of living near a well-functioning avocado farmers’ group, the study notes.

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: 20 December 2019; Hits: 6272

The introduction of the Kenya Food and Drugs Authority Bill has shown why we need impact assessments for all legislation

Our parliamentarians are sometimes required to rule on some challenging proposals, with the private members’ Kenya Food and Drug Authority (KFDA) Bill a prime example from 2019: yet as opinions now unite around abandoning the idea of a joint medicine and food safety regulator, the bill has raised some clear lessons.

Above all, it has shown the risks of paths to parliament that do not include impact assessments. For the KFDA idea emerged with the prospect of a very large price tag, but very little sight of the envisaged benefits from all the spending.

Indeed, at its inception, the KFDA Bill was to have been a government bill. In 2018, the President’s Office announced the bill had been fast tracked, and the Ministries of Agriculture and Health were together working to place it before parliament within 100 days.

The ministries never presented a draft, for the same reasons as other nations have disbanded FDAs that had already been established. The challenge lay in structuring a viable joint authority spanning both ministries, across different interests and skills, beside multiple existing agencies, and with many similar, but also widely different touch points for data gathering, monitoring and evaluation.

With no government bill having emerged, parliament was instead presented mid-year with a private member’s KFDA Bill, even as government officials continued to research, investigate and conceptualize the best possible ways to achieve food safety and high quality medicines.

The side-step into a private member’s bill, in the meantime, meant that the bill in parliament was no longer bound by the normal government process of due diligence. Any government-backed bill must present a Regulatory Impact Assessment, covering the costs involved, and the benefits to the nation. But for the private KFDA Bill that analysis was a blank.

Daniella Munene CEO of Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya

Dr. Daniella Munene, CEO of Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya

That’s a thought-provoking gap when the potential spend was huge, at more than Sh4bn, in a bid to duplicate the roles of 10 of the 21 government agencies involved in national food testing, safety and quality control across the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Trade and Industrialisation.

In fact, the bill proposed disbanding the Veterinary Services Board, the Pharmacy and Poisons Board and the Department of Public Health, wrapping them up into one and managing their roles together with the roles of 10 other agencies, which included the Kenya Bureau of Standards, the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services, and the Government Chemist’s Department.

The rest, about seven, would have been left to work entirely independently in the same space, but not under the new KFDA.

This transition was certain to have cost lives in diverted spending, with the set up, alone, costing 45 x more than the nation’s entire diabetes programme of Sh85.7m, or the cost of setting up 300 new rural clinics. But its systemic replication of roles was also likely to have caused drug approval errors and increased food contamination, as well as extra spending again in recurrent costs.

Indeed, Tanzania was spending Sh13.2bn a year with over 266 employees in its TFDA, and the government still reported that it had aggravated the food and health sector challenges due to duplicated roles with the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS). TFDA was dissolved this year.

Likewise, the USA incurred double costs in food regulation by funding the Ministry of Agriculture one billion dollars with 9,200 full time employees while at the same time the FDA spent $1.3bn and employed 5,000 full time employees. Even so, rising health complications were reported due to drug approval errors and food contamination, while endless cases of irrational agency divisions of responsibility, corruption, and food recalls marred the authority and have, likewise, led to its closure.

Such a journey was not one that Kenya needed to take. The country has anyway suffered a surge in food scares, spanning aflatoxins in maize, antibiotics in meat, mercury in sugar, pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables and contaminated soft drinks among others. In 2017, the Ministry of Health reported 3,967 cholera cases, causing 76 mortalities. There is an urgency to inject efficiency in our strained health care system to get the most value for every shilling spent.

As the Ministry of Agriculture now unveils a single agency to oversee and ensure food safety for us all, and the Ministry of Health, likewise reviews all aspects of medical regulation, we can now ensure that we all get the most gains for the associated government spending through thorough impact assessments from the very start.

Daniella Munene is the CEO of Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya (PSK).

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