market

: 30 July 2019; Hits: 8726

Embu County secures export market for farmers’ tomatoes, onions, capsicum, cabbages, potatoes, chillies, cucumbers and passion among other fruits

Smallholder farmers in Embu County are set to benefit from a new market after the county department of agriculture secured a deal in partnership with Habitat Intertrade, a company that deals with farming and trading of horticultural products.

In this, produce under the new market include onions, tomatoes, capsicum, potatoes, cabbages, chillies, spinach, kales, cucumber, lettuce, lemons, passion fruits, watermelons, pawpaw, avocado, butternuts, mangoes and oranges.

Habitat Intertrade will enter into contracts with farmers where the company will provide a reliable market for the produce with payment being based on cash on delivery.

The deal targets the youth in the county following the launch of Embu County Youth in Agribusiness Strategy 2019-2023.

In this, interested youth farmers and prospective farmers are expected to forward their details including name, ward, irrigation scheme, acreage, the crop they are cultivating or intending to and the quantity to the nearest ward agricultural officers. The county will then link them to buyers.

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Asmin Maslah (left), a horticulture farmer harvesting capsicums with the help of two casuals.

The export market will help in reducing post-harvest losses incurred by farmers in the county and Kenya at large.

In 2017 for example, Kenyan farmers lost 1.9m tonnes of food as they struggled to find markets according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

Of the total food wasted, maize, Kenya’s staple food was the most affected with the country losing Sh29.6bn worth of the crop yet it imported another bunch worth Sh42bn.

Green bananas were the second most affected crop as farmers lost Sh24bn worth of the produce.

Other produce that went to waste due to poor storage and handling, transport, and fungi attack, according to data contained in the 2018 Economic Survey released in April last year, includes Irish potatoes (Sh19.7bn), milk (Sh12.4bn), beans (Sh11.5bn), ripe yellow bananas (Sh5.6bn), sweet potatoes (Sh3.5bn), tomatoes (Sh2.4bn), pineapples (Sh2.4bn), sorghum (Sh1.9bn), and millet (Sh1.6bn).

According to the survey, Kenya loses approximately a third of its produce yearly through post-harvest losses and wastage by consumers who buy more food than they can consume.

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: 30 July 2019; Hits: 7022

Mkulima bora app connects more than 5,000 farmers to consumers directly

John Kinyua, a computer science graduate from Chuka University has invented an app that will help farmers connect to consumers directly without having to pass through brokers.

Mkulima Bora is an android app that can be downloaded from Google Playstore and allows farmers to download, register and access features such as buying and selling.

“I came up with the app in 2014 to connect farmers with consumers across the country; this was after I saw my parents incurring losses in their banana farm due to lack of market. I realized that farmers had challenges in conquering the market because there were no ideal platforms to connect them to consumers,” said Kinyua.

A 2010 research paper published in the Journal of Agriculture and Social Research (JASR) on the implications of middlemen in the supply chain of products found that middlemen pretend to bridge the gap between small scale retailers and the manufacturers but their mode of doing business is a threat to small scale retailers.

“The real profit goes to the middlemen who buy up the farm products at almost give away prices and sell at outrageous prices to the consumers. This attitude of middle men have discouraged genuine investors getting into agriculture because of the marginal profit associated with it as the middle men cart away the bulk of the profits,” the research revealed.

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mkulima bora

Currently, approximately 5,000 users have registered on Mkulima Bora app while an average of 200 farmers uses it daily.

The app charges users/farmers Sh50 weekly or Sh150 monthly in subscription fees. First time registered users however, get the use to app for free within the first six months of registration before paying for it.

The app has a library of 200 e-books in which farmers can purchase to enhance their farming skills. In this, Mkulima Bora keeps 40 per cent of book sales with the rest going to the qualified professionals who wrote them.

John Kinyua

The app uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to study consumer behaviors so as to provide farmers with quality market. AI also helps to identify which areas are in high demand of a certain product.

A farmer who has no smart phone can posts his product on the Short Message Service (SMS) by writing the product name then # and location and send it to the number +254 780 00 66 10. In this, he or she is connected to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter thereby increasing the marketability of the produce.

“One of the challenges we have faced is financial constraints, even though we have realized Sh800,000 from the app since 2014, Sh600,000 have gone towards developing and running it,” said Kinyua.

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: 29 July 2019; Hits: 5429

JKUAT student selected ambassador to the world’s Thought for Food Foundation

leah at an agricultural show

Leah Wambui (right) addressing a participant who visited JKUAT stand at A.S.K Central Kenya National Show, Nyeri. Photo courtesy.

Leah Wambui Njau, a finalist student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) has become the first student to be selected to the Thought for Food Foundation (TFF), the world’s next-generation innovation engine for food and agriculture.

The student who is pursuing Bachelor of Science degree in Horticulture will be among the 400 (TFF) Ambassadors selected globally to serve for a period of one year ending May 31, 2020.

During the time, the ambassadors are expected to look for innovative agricultural start-ups, register them and get them ready for the 2019 TFF challenge that begins in October 2019.

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The 2019 TFF Challenge focuses on the seemingly forgotten and underutilized crops such as Moringa, Teff or Bambara Groundnut, despite their outstanding nutritional value.

The TFF ambassador programme is an initiative of the Foundation, which works towards finding new solutions to global food and agriculture challenges. The programme is geared towards engaging and empowering the next generation to feed at least 10 billion people by 2050.

Across the globe, the youth are viewed as the future of agriculture, yet very few young people see a future of themselves in agriculture. This has been attributed to many factors including insufficient access to knowledge, information and education.

Passionate about agriculture and farming in particular, Leah is grateful that the ambassadorship gives her a platform to create awareness and build capacity on matters food security and nutrition.

“The idea that I’ll be part of a noble course of feeding the nation is such a great delight. I love plants and I love working with them. I could do it all my life,” said Leah.

She is however cognizant of the fact that a lot needs to be done to build a more sustainable and inclusive food system that improves livelihoods, replenishes natural resources, sequesters carbon, reduces waste, and enhances health and nutrition.

Leah believes that the global community she is part of, will be instrumental in catalyzing the creation of new innovative ideas and help launch agricultural startups that can provide solutions for the agricultural challenges we face as a country.

“Being a horticulturist, my greatest desire is and has always been to feed the nation. This has been my everyday mantra and part of the ambassadorship involves empowering young Kenyans about food and agriculture and the opportunities to innovate in this space,” said Leah, a protégé of Prof. Mary Abukutsa, an avid ambassador of food security and nutrition.

She believes that the forgotten and underutilized crops are critical to solving food system challenges and creating more resilient, sustainable and diverse global food systems.

Leah is confident that through the creation of awareness and capacity building initiatives of the program, they will be able to attract more young people to see agriculture as a viable venture. She believes, there are vast opportunities for agricultural enthusiasts who have trained their minds to think through problems and come up with solutions.

“Agriculture has always had an image problem but there’s a place for the next generation to apply clever strategies to counter misconceptions and generate knowledge and solutions to the nation’s food problems,” says Leah.

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At the end of the ambassadorship, Leah trusts she will have deepened her professional experience, expanded her network and boosted her credentials and “that’s a good start in my young career journey,” she states.

Apart from identifying start-ups, Leah with her fellow Kenyan Ambassadors, plan to host several meet-ups and activities geared towards raising awareness of food security and promote sustainable agricultural practices.

Other Kenyans in the programme include Bernadette Ogeto and Prisca Onyango.

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