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: 26 October 2022; Hits: 538

Makueni sweet potato farmers get ready market from Kenya’s first commercial microwave processing plant

Innovations Portada

By George Munene

Makueni-based agro-processing company Burton and Bamber Ltd which works with farmers from Makueni and Kitui counties to secure a market for their orange-fleshed sweet potatoes has set up the country’s first commercial microwave processing plant.

Continous-flow microwave heating is an emerging technology in food processing and offers a fast and efficient way to sterilise sweet potato puree while retaining its colour, taste, and nutrition value better than conventional sterilisation systems.

It makes the puree storable for over a year at ambient temperature eliminating the need for cold storage.

According to the International Potato Center (CIP) Orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) puree can be used as a substitute for 30-60 per cent of the flour in a range of baked or fried products, reducing production costs and increasing their nutritional content.

It can be used to fortify baby foods, and porridge, and incorporated into school meals and bakery products such as bread, buns, and doughnuts.

The orange-fleshed sweet potato which is classed as a superfood is one of the richest natural sources of beta-carotene which is converted to vitamin A in the human body. Just 125 grams provide the daily amount of vitamin A needed for children aged five or younger.

Vitamin A is critical for growth and development in young children and for building vision, immunity, and reproduction capabilities.

Under an out-grower scheme, Burton and Bamber (B&B) signed contracts with farmers to supply sweet potatoes as well as provide them with training on the best agronomic practices when growing the tuber to ensure they produce sufficient quantities and quality.

Trained farmers were issued Global Gap certification-- an international standard for food safety.

The innovative system for sweet potato puree production involves peeling, steaming, and pulping the sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes have the advantage of being able to be grown on marginal land with few agronomic inputs; early maturing varieties can be harvested in 3-4 months when most other sources of food are still in the shamba; early maturation also makes them drought and disease tolerant as well as being resilient to effects of climate change.

The project is part of the Development and Delivery of Bio-fortified crops at scale project funded by the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). The International Potato Center (CIP) working with North Carolina State University (NCSU) and US company Sinnova Tek LLC and Burton and Bamber Ltd are the implementors of the project in Kenya.

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: 12 October 2022; Hits: 661

Why it is more profitable to sell onions immediately after harvest than store

CSIRO ScienceImage 2782 Brown Onions

By George Munene

According to players in the onion agri sub-sector, it is more profitable for small-scale farmers to harvest and sell their onions even if the market prices are unfavorable rather than store them for better prices in the future.

Onions are perhaps the only widely consumed horticultural product that is relatively easy to store. Intuitively, it seems financially sound for farmers to hoard them for a better future price.

This however negates the fact that better future prices are not guaranteed; up to 20 per cent of weight can be lost from stored onions; storage facilities can be expensive and need to be secured; as well as the opportunity cost incurred.

Joshua Mamwaka, an onion trader in Nairobi’s Wakulima Market charts the prices of agro-commodities and has seen a similar pattern play out throughout the year:

Farmers will store their onions and look to time the market and sell when prices are at their highest. Most of these farmers are however often victims of parallel thinking; they all flood the market with onions at the same time when prices are high, and a select few get to enjoy these inflated prices before the market is flooded and prices dip lower than they ever were before.

“Farmers need to invest in monitoring markets at the front end, not the back end when their crops are already harvested.

Get to learn what the average prices have been over particular months which will inform when to plant. You should also look to build your knowledge of market dynamics, which are forever changing. Do not just focus on crop production,” he informed

There are months when supplies to Kenyan markets are so low, brokers will buy anything. In other months they will only accept well-dried onions owing to markets being well-stocked. Tanzanian onions also flood the Kenyan market periodically, which is not a time you want to be heading to market. All this should be information a farmer is well acquainted with before even breaking ground.

Lucy Wangari, popularly known in farming circles as the Onion Doctor, advises small-holder farmers to sell their onions given they can cover their cost of production and earn a profit then go again.

“Onions are a vegetable; they are meant to be harvested for consumption, not for storage,” she advises.

There is also the opportunity cost most farmers do not account for while storing onions in the pursuit of better prices:

“If I can meet my overheads and make a small profit, I’d much rather harvest and sell my onions at their peak weight for Sh30 a kilogram, grow and earn from something else, than have them stored for months in the hope of doubling my profits,” said Joshua.

Your financial liquidity, i.e, the ability to raise cash when it is needed is also hampered. When you have sold off your onions, you can meet some of your short-term financial obligations and reinvest in the coming planting season. This avoids having to borrow money which often comes with attached interest rates.

Wall Street investor Warren Buffet is credited with an old-school saying: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” According to Joshua, this can be applied in reading local food markets as going against the grain often leads to gains for well-informed investors.

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: 30 September 2022; Hits: 1122

Silkworm farming earns farmers up to Sh1.8M an acre

Silk worm 21 days 01

By George Munene

According to the Kenya Agricultural and Research Organisation (KALRO) with proper modalities, farmers can fetch up to Sh1.8 million annually rearing silkworms on one acre.

Dubbed ‘Queen of Textiles’ as it has often been viewed as a status symbol of luxury and royalty, the demand for silk remains high. One kilogram of grade A silk cocoon fetches Sh1,207 with grades B and C earning farmers Sh966 and Sh604 respectively.

Peter Mutuku, a farmer in semi-arid Makueni County can attest to this. He first took on silkworm farming in 2018, when he saw the success his friends had with it. Earning Sh6,000 in passive income from his first batch of 300 worms, he now rears around 10,000 worms.

“We get the worms in their second cycle from Makueni-based Tosheka Industry, feed them for 19 days when they start spinning-- the process of producing yarn to form cocoons. At this stage, we wrap the worm in a newspaper for seven days so that the silk can be easily harvested,” Mutuku explained in an interview with BBC’s Smart Money.

The silk is harvested as a cocoon which has the outside silk fiber and a living pupa within it for weighing before paying the farmer.

Tosheka outsources the unrefined silk from 15 farmers in Makueni each with a capacity to produce 15 kilograms per cycle of 19-21 days.

This means each farmer can earn up to Sh7, 245 every 40 days in supplementary income as the practice is not demanding and doesn't stop them from carrying out other economic activities.

The pupa is then degummed-- separating the pupa which is used as an alternative protein and fiber which spurn into silk. This is done by flossing and then spinning the silk fiber. This forms yarn than is weived and made into the finished material.

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According to Teresa Njue, the company’s production coordinator the company sought out silk farmers to substitute for the costlier cotton.

Tosheka settled on the Eris Silkworm as it is suited to the county’s arid climate as well as being eco-friendly.

“We have found that these are products that are very much needed in the market. We have local designers who seek out our fabric as most of the market is saturated with bland Chinese imports and African fabrics which are either Kitenge or Kanga, They have been yearning for something they can create on their own,” said company founder Lucy Lau Bigham.

The company currently exports about Sh603.7 million every quarter, mainly to Europe and the US, and has an impressive 30-40 per cent return on investment.

The company’s major obstacles have been meeting the minimum tonnage required by buyers and consistency in the quality and aesthetic of the handmade silk fiber.

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