Establishing small scale industries for processing farm produce is an ambitious development Kenya seeks to achieve in order to stimulate growth of its rural economy.
Official figures show at least 75 percent of the Kenyan population live in rural areas, mainly relying on agriculture for their daily livelihood.
While many still sell raw produce, gradual steps are being made by farmers supported by public agencies to process the harvests on small scale in the rural regions thus promoting the government’s agenda for creation of agricultural cottage industries or small scale firms.
David Kimondo is one of the farmer-turned-agricultural investors from the town of Mweiga in Nyeri county, central Kenya.
He extracts oil from canola seeds through his small scale processing firm — Kieni Canola Oil — enabling other farmers to enhance their incomes.
“Farmers in my home county (Nyeri) are getting into canola farming because I can offer them a ready market,” Kimondo said in an interview with Xinhua on Monday.
“I have about 1,000 farmers spread in counties of Nyeri, Siaya, Narok and Trans Nzoia supplying me with the canola seeds. Most have grown in small scale but I have one white farmer growing the seeds in large scale and supplies me with 30 to 40 tonnes,” he said.
He has also grown the crop in one acre of his own. He buys a kilogram of the seeds for 0.35 U.S. dollars, he says.
His venture has been recognized as a cottage industry by the Micro and Small Enterprise Authority and the Export Promotion Council (EPC) has come on board to assist him in selling his products in other African countries, he says.
He said the oil is among the 67 goods the Export Promotion Council has approved to be appropriate for sale in foreign countries.
He says he intends to sell the oil in countries within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region, which includes Swaziland, Burundi, Egypt, Mauritius, Rwanda and Zambia among others.
“EPC is currently helping me in redesigning the brand to meet the COMESA marketing requirements and once they are done, I will be ready to export my product,” said Kimondo, who started the firm in 2009 after abandoning his casual labourer job in a farm owned by a white man who would manually extract the oil from the seeds.
Canola oil serves as any liquid oil used for cooking any type of meal, he says.
He has an extraction machine which can process five tonnes of seeds a day and two filtration machines for purifying the oil, all of which he imported from China.
Currently, he has seven employees filling the gaps in his production-market chain.
He says canola is a rotational crop which also enriches the soil. Farmers can replenish their soils by growing it after harvesting crops especially maize and wheat.
At the current rates, he sells a litre of the oil for four dollars. Half the liter goes for two dollars while 200ml is available at a price of one dollar.
According to him Kenyan farmers can break from poverty should they be assisted to establish cottage industries.
“Small scale industries can help farmers add value to their products and sell at a higher price and fetch good profits,” he said.
Starting off was the greatest hurdle he had to overcome to become a resourceful farmer and an investor in the agricultural sector which contributes at least 24 percent to Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product.
“I had to source for funding from Sacco’s since I did not have the security to guarantee me 10,000 dollars I needed to take off,” he said noting that access to credit is phenomenon challenge to farmers’ evolvement into small or large scale agribusiness.
According to Vincent Sagwe, agricultural specialist and head of agriculture department in Kisii county, cottage industries reduce post-harvest losses farmers incur while transporting their farm produce.
He said they can also help them reap good benefits from selling finished end products which can attract competitive prices in the local and international markets.
Kenya is among the countries in the COMESA bloc seeking for removal of non-tariff barriers such as quotas and levies to ease free flow of goods between the respective countries.
Exempting countries from strict regulations would encourage quick exchange of goods and services among the African countries in the Eastern and Southern region.
This in the long-term would promote establishment of the cottage industries in Kenya and further support their sustainable productivity. Enditem
by Robert Manyara/Xinhua/NewsGhana.com.gh
