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    Sossi cul­tiv­a­tion boom births unique value ad­di­tion ven­tures

    After a suc­cess­ful trial, soya farm­ers in West­ern Kenya have now moved bey­ond cul­tiv­a­tion of the nu­tri­tious bean to adding value that pro­duces among oth­ers sossi yoghurt, flour and bever­ages in a model that is now not only giv­ing the farm­ers extra in­come but point­ing them to new mar­kets.

    The farm­ers pooled to­gether under Mu­mias Dis­trict Fed­er­a­tion of Soya beans Farm­ers group (MUDESOF) were in­tro­duced to the luc­rat­ive crop by Pro­massidor the man­u­fac­tur­ers of the now fam­ous house­hold del­ic­acy Sossi.  “The firm ap­proached us in 2010 and offered us the ini­tial farm in­puts in­clud­ing cer­ti­fied seeds, fer­til­izers and know­ledge on bet­ter hus­bandry prac­tices,” noted the group leader Stephen Kasamani. The firm’s entry into the Kenyan mar­ket brought the much needed re­lief to the farm­ers be­cause they had to in­vent ways of ac­quir­ing af­ford­able raw ma­ter­i­als which was mainly Soya beans. “We came into the Kenyan mar­ket and had to begin the hard way. There were no ser­i­ous Soya farm­ers in the coun­try and to re­main rel­ev­ant in the mar­ket, we had to im­port the Soya beans from other mar­kets like Uganda, Malawi among oth­ers a prac­tice that proved to be very ex­pens­ive and con­trary to our goals of em­power­ing the loc­als of the coun­try where we are op­er­at­ing from,” ex­plained David In­yani Sup­ply Chain Man­ager at Pro­massidor. “To fix the prob­lem the com­pany sought for a long term solu­tion which was en­dear­ing the farm­ers to the crop,” he added.

    After tire­less ef­forts, the com­pany can now smile as more farm­ers are ad­opt­ing the crop es­pe­cially from West­ern Kenya. “Kenyan farm­ers have man­aged to sup­ply us with over 3000 tonnes of Soya which has en­abled us pro­duce over 27 mil­lion packs,” noted Robert Clarke the Chief Ex­ec­ut­ive Of­ficer of Pro­massidor in a re­cent in­ter­view. Apart from the firm’s suc­cess, the crop’s ad­op­tion in the re­gion is also giv­ing rise to other ven­tures like the rise of small scale in­dus­tries to pro­cess the Soya bean into vari­ous products like cakes, Yoghurt, Flour and bever­ages.

    Ac­cord­ing to Kasamani, their value ad­di­tion pro­jects rose due to the fact that some­times, there were re­main­ders of the Soya har­vests in small quant­it­ies that could not be trans­por­ted to Pro­massidor’s fact­ory in Nairobi. Al­though Pro­massidor ac­cepts any quant­ity of the right vari­ety of Soya bean in Nairobi, the trans­port modes they send to the field only carry bulk pur­chases like five tonnes. Farm­ers have to there­fore look for al­tern­at­ive mar­kets for the re­main­ing har­vest.  The local mar­kets provide about Sh30 per kilo a price that is half of what Pro­massidor of­fers which ac­cord­ing to him, trans­lates to a total loss to a farmer hence the birth of the small scale value ad­di­tion in­dus­tries.

    Most of the farm­ers be­ne­fit­ted from the reg­u­lar train­ings on these ven­tures from other de­vel­op­ment or­gan­iz­a­tions through Kenya In­dus­trial Re­search De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tutes (KIRDI). After know­ledge ac­quis­i­tion, the farm­ers are now boast­ing of cham­pi­on­ing a new breed of more nu­tri­tious products from Soya al­though they pro­duce on a small scale. “Our mar­ket is slowly ex­pand­ing al­though fin­an­cial con­straints are still de­ter­ring us from the pur­chase of the state art Ma­chines to ex­pand,” ex­plained Kasamani.

    Ac­cord­ing to Kasamani al­though their group is pro­du­cing nu­mer­ous products from Soya beans, three dis­tinct­ive products have emerged and com­mand a higher de­mand from their cli­ents. “Com­pos­ite flour which is a mix­ture of soya and fin­ger mil­let is fast mov­ing due to it being ideal for pa­tients and ba­bies. Our Soya bever­age is also fast mov­ing and some cli­ents con­fess to it being su­per­ior qual­ity as op­posed to other sim­ilar products in the mar­ket,” he ex­plained.

    Des­pite the pit­falls, the group is cre­at­ing a ray of hope for many people in the area as the pro­jects are cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tun­it­ies for in­di­vidu­als in the re­gion. Many youths in the area are in­volved in the pro­duc­tion chain pro­cess es­pe­cially dur­ing the har­vest time. “Al­though we have cas­ual work­ers, we are giv­ing them a chance to make ends meet at a time when un­em­ploy­ment es­pe­cially among the youth has hit re­cord highs. Dur­ing the peak sea­son when many farm­ers are har­vest­ing, we em­ploy dir­ectly and in­dir­ectly over 300 people who in­clude the fact­ory work­ers, sup­pli­ers, mar­keters among oth­ers.”

    To meet mar­ket de­mands and ac­quire other cer­ti­fic­a­tions paper work from stand­ard­iz­a­tion bod­ies like Kenya Bur­eau of Stand­ards, the group is in dis­cus­sion with KIRDI Ma­lava, Kisumu or Bungoma to use their mod­ern ma­chines which were in­stalled by United Na­tions In­dus­trial De­vel­op­ment Or­gan­iz­a­tion (UNIDO). “We are ne­go­ti­at­ing to see that we can pro­duce our products using their ma­chines which are up-to date. He ex­plained that the deal should be sealed in the near fu­ture be­cause the ma­chines were in­stalled by the gov­ern­ment under an ar­range­ment that their pro­jects runs for three years after which the ma­chines are handed to the farm­ers to con­duct value ad­di­tion.”

    Cur­rently the Soya value ad­di­tion pro­jects in the area do not threaten the in­terests of Pro­massidor ac­cord­ing to Kasamani. “We are pro­cessing about one per­cent of our sea­son’s har­vests and 99 per­cent is de­livered to Pro­massidor. We just opt to pro­cess it if its’ sur­plus or left be­hind due to lo­gist­ical chal­lenges. We do not have ca­pa­city to com­pete with them and that is why they also en­cour­age us to do the same,” he ex­plained. 

    In fact to the con­trary, Kasamani ar­gues that they are pro­mot­ing Pro­massidor products like Sossi be­cause they en­cour­aging the masses to con­sume Soya products. “When the pop­u­la­tion ac­cepts our Soya products then it makes it easy for Pro­masidor to ac­cess the mar­ket be­cause the loc­als already know the health be­ne­fits of Soya products,” added Kasamani. Sim­ilar sen­ti­ments were ex­pressed by In­yani who noted that they have to em­power the farm­ers so that the coun­try real­izes the full po­ten­tial of the be­ne­fits from Soya beans.

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