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: 15 April 2016; Hits: 5808

Agri-OLX platform point Kenyan farmers to a broader market

OLX, an online selling platform has created an agricultural segment, offering internet savvy farmers a dedicated site to sell their produce. This is good news especially to small holder farmers who are cut from market by high transportation costs and poor infrastructure, hence incurring huge post harvest loses.
Lack of market also exposes them to exploitative middlemen who buy their produce at throw away prices. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), at least 40 percent of agricultural produce go to waste annually in Sub-Sahara Africa due to lack market problems.
A farmer intending to use the OLX platform will have to create an account on www.olx.co.ke or download the OLX app on phone, fill in contacts including the user name, email address, password and phone number. Once registration is approved, the farmer can then log in using his user name and password, give a brief description of the product- , quantity, location and price before uploading the photo. The produce on the site can be viewed by interested buyers anywhere in the country who contact the farmer.
After a sales agreement between the two, a farmer can now send the sold produce to the buyer via G4S express logistics at slashed price, thanks to signed partnership between OLX and G4S early this year.
OLX country manager Peter Ndiang’ui explained that the growing interest in farm products was behind the new category which follows others in clothing, electronics and vehicles categories.
READ ALSO: Linking farmers to Nairobi consumers
He expressed confidence that the platform will increase efficiency and unlock markets for farmers in the country, hence catalyzing activities in the sector that contributes up to 24 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. ‘’The product is counting on the gains made in the communication sector to deliver market information to rural farmers responsible for 70 percent of the country’s food production, improving peoples’ lives,’’ said Ndiang’ui
The country mobile internet penetration in rural Kenya has tremendously improved for the past two year, thanks to the saturation of affordable smart phones in the market.
The platform also offers buyers more variety and better quality of produce as multiple farmers compete to offer the same products. The platform which is already live in Nairobi is expected expand to other parts of the country soon.

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: 15 April 2016; Hits: 8271

Machakos fruit factory to benefit farmers

Dubai-founded international fruits company, Joz Group, is set to launch its first factory in Machakos County in a bid to offer ready market to farmers who sell their produce at throw-away prices wherever the supply is higher than consumption.
Governor Alfred Mutua, who is on an official business-sourcing trip in the Middle East state, sealed the deal that will see the company break ground for its processing plant in Kenya in three month.
Joz groups process all types of fruits.
‘’My Government will galvanize our farmers and help in collecting fruits at decent prices and sending to the factory. We no longer want to see our mangoes and oranges rotting on the ground whereas they can be converted to money by our farmers,’’ said Mutua.
READ ALSO: Supermarket supplier looking for farmers to buy fruits from
This news comes at the time when the Eastern part of Kenya which produces a huge bulk of the country’s mango is grappling with market problems arising from lack of proper storage facilities.
According to Farm Africa, a non governmental body working with fruits farmers in Kitui, Mackakos and Makueni Counties, close to 40 per cent of the produce grown in Ukambani go to waste during the peak seasons due to lack of ready market, poor storage faculties and low market diversification knowledge amongst farmers.
READ ALSO: Rare fruit fetches Sh2,300 per kilo in Kenya
The new facility is expected to be processing at least 20,000 tonnes per year, buying close to 60 per cent of fruits from the three counties while providing hundreds of job opportunities to locals. It is also expected to tame excessive exploitation by middle men who buy fruits from vulnerable farmers at very low prices.
Machakos County’s is enticing both local and foreign investors with incentives like land, a move that is expected to foster manufacturing economy in the region, upgrading locals both socially and economically.

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: 15 April 2016; Hits: 8129

Mbegu Choice helping farmers get high value seed online

By the year 2050, Kenya alone will have a population of 56 million working people. The majority of this number will be women and youth.

This projection introduces a new challenge of feeding Kenyans sufficiently to prevent hunger and food insecurity.

Without satisfactory organization and good planning mechanisms to encourage food security, the perennial twin problems of food insecurity and hunger will continue to plague the country. In addition, low diversity of crops in Kenya’s food supply increasingly contributes to low nutrition and stunting. An estimated 35% of Kenyan children under the age of 5 are stunted. This has significant negative implications for their future ability to learn, and become productive members of society.
Increasing Kenya’s food production is the best way to feed our growing population, and to properly and adequately tackle the problem of food insecurity.
Farmers’ Plight
Many Kenyan farmers are unaware of new and modern varieties of crop seed that have been bred by local Kenyan breeders for the changing climate conditions and that can produce much higher yields. Even in cases when farmers know of the new seed varieties he/she needs, they often find that their agrodealers do not stock a wide selection of varieties and many times cannot access the new varieties.
Because of this, farmers have had to fall back on the portion of their harvests that they habitually set aside for the next planting season, commonly called “recycled seed”.
Endless recycling of seeds has been found to be one of the reasons why Kenyan farmers continue to achieve low yields year in and year out. To combat this, farmers are encouraged to embrace the use of modern varieties of certified seed, and to regularly purchase fresh seed.
MbeguChoice’s timely entry
This is where MbeguChoice comes in. MbeguChoice was developed to bridge the information gap that exists between seed breeders and Kenyan farmers.
MbeguChoice is an online tool that provides information on the wide range of certified crop seed varieties that are available to farmers in Kenya. In addition, it allows users to search the crop seed varieties with the attributes that they desire the most and that are best suited for their region.
For example, farmers who want sorghum seed with attributes such as early maturity and drought tolerance will get information on which varieties best suit them and will work best on their farm. They will also learn which seed companies produce seed of these varieties.
With this information, MbeguChoice is also very helpful for Agrodealers. Agrodealers now have an easy way to choose the best crop seed varieties to stock, with information of the newest releases and those that are best suited to their sales regions. It also informs them which seed companies (suppliers) they should contact, in an effort to make sourcing as easy as possible.
Conclusion
Unless we improve access to crop seed variety information and increase availability of these seeds to farmers, the country will be facing even more severe food insecurity.
MbeguChoice provides a big part of the solution, by being the best place to get complete crop seed variety information. Farmers, agrodealers and extension workers now have an easy way to identify the new and modern crop varieties that will deliver increased yields for Kenya’s farmers.