Chili farming in kenya
on Colm in Kenya (Kenya), 14/Jun/2009 07:02, 34 days ago
After the indulgence of last weeks blog, something morepalatablewhat?There’s a farmer (there are several but anyway) inChoyni, a division in theKilifiDistrict, who grows something calledABEC– African Birds EyeChili. They are small red/orangechilli'sand are extremely hot, Kelly Brooke hot.ABECare somewhat particular to this part of Kenya and to the division ofChoyni. The farmer there believes, with some justification, that there is a market for this potentafricanchiliand thus a potential source of valuable income.Problem 1:Thechilifarmer has no source marketing information forABEC(i.e.doesn’t know where the customers for it are) and his only access to the market is via a broker who dictates terms of tradeandsells thechili’s wholesale to a factory ‘up country’.ABECsupply is thanmonopolisedand sold to small traders at greatly inflated prices.Problem 2:The broker pays 50Kshper kg ofABEC(108sch=1€). Harvesting thesechilli'scost 150/200Ksha day in labour and at present only 2.5kg’s can be harvested per day. A freechilifor the person who spots the big problem here.Problem 3:The other problem is that under these impossible business conditions, it is very difficult to save to invest in the fertilizer needed to produce a goodABECharvest. And access to finance is next to impossible plus, very few farmers have the confidence to borrow to invest.The district agricultural officer ofChoyni, Mr.Ngothotold me this on Friday. This and other issues facing farmers. Mr Ngotho is working with farmers to boost production and introduce the idea of running a farm as a business - not just subsitance - by running Farmer Field Schools and bringing together all stakesholders (like NGOs and Micro Finance Organisations).Que hero music, enter stage left SCOPE with one possible solution.We are piloting (that at the moment is my favourite word,“piloting”. If it fails I can just say “Of course itdidn’t work. It was a pilot, silly”) a project that will bring farmers and Micro/Small Enterprises (MSEs) together directly– rather than via the current exploitative middlemen system described above.The correct speak for this is to remove farmers andMSEsfrom the current supply chain and create sustainable value chains or dynamic value chains between them.Speak like this is important if in fact, you don’t really know what you are doing but need to convince other that you do. The ‘dynamic value chain’ bit is my line for example, MrNgothoseems impressed with it anyway.We will find such farmers with a particular penchant for farming such crops likeABEC(or any crop really) and find markets for them. Collate all this market information in one database, supply farmers andMSEswith the info and facilitate the bringing together of each party utilising a mobile phone payment system callMpesa– agricultural blind date! We call it the Virtual Marketplace.The meeting on Friday with District Agricultural Officers was positive, a breakthrough of sorts for me, finally some progression. We’vealong way to go for the Virtual Marketplace to even work on the very smallest level. Butat leastwe’vegot progression.Andat leastI’vegot something to write about what?Take it easy