In many developed and developing countries, Irish potato is ranked among the most important source of household food along with wheat, rice, and maize. In Kenya, potato ranks number two after maize (FAO, 2012). Potato has a high potential for addressing food insecurity due to its high productivity per unit area.

However, farmers’ ability to have high productivity per unit area is dependent on many factors, such as availability of clean and certified seeds and good crop husbandry. In addition, market high volumes are dependent on the post-harvest handling skills and practices of the farmer.

The production and access of high-grade basic seed remains a key constraint in the development of a competitive potato seed industry in Eastern and Central Africa. In Kenya, farmers have been experiencing severe shortage of clean and certified potato seeds. Production of tubers at farm level is also below the expected productivity with yield levels of about seven tonnes per ha against a potential of 50 tonnes. Majority of farmers harvest the tubers before they are mature. They also lack storage technology and facilities, which results to poor quality and post-harvest losses.

To address this potato seed shortage, the hydroponics technology, a special type of hydro-culture, has been introduced in Kenya. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil or an aggregate medium. The basic principle of hydroponics growing is to grow plants suspended in a closed or semi closed environment by spraying the plant's dangling roots and lower stem with an atomized, nutrient-rich water solution. 

Farm Concern International (FCI ) is partnering with the Wheat Foundation International, a wheat and potato seeds grower located in Timau, Eastern Kenya and various seed multipliers to ensure farmers benefit from this technology.

Wheat Foundation International is addressing seeds shortage through use of hydroponics technology and mechanization of postharvest handling of potato seeds. The organization is also pretesting cold storage of potatoes using locally available materials.

Through this partnership, farmers have been able to benefit through participatory training on potato production farmers. A two-day training on seed multiplication, handling of the clean certified seed, farm potato production and post-harvest management was conducted for 27 farmers from Meru and Kiambu Dohoma sites. This was aimed at building farmers’ capacity for enhanced farming practices and techniques, especially better post-harvest handling and value addition techniques.

In Meru, 50 farmers collectively purchased potato seeds worth Ksh 146,000 (USD.1622) from Kisima Farm. The collective purchase initiative was attractive to an additional 190 members of Commercial Villages in Meru which resulted in additional collective purchase of other seeds worth Ksh109, 770 (USD.1219) from Taai Agro dealers. Farmers benefited from discounted prices thus saved a collective amount of Ksh 20,120 (USD.223). Taai Agro dealers, one of the Agro dealers in Meru collaborated with FCI to supply TAV seed, and other agrochemicals.

The Domestic Horticulture Markets (DoHoMa) Programme provides a platform for the participation of smallholders in the marketplace, triggering demand processes for domestic trade in horticultural and staple food commodities.

The programme works through Farm Concern International’s (FCI) Commercial Village Model (CVM) to propel smallholder commercialization. In the course of implementing DoHoMa, it has become apparent that traditional markets play a major role in driving agricultural trade and enterprise. The intervention involves scouting and analyzing various markets to identify the major wholesalers on the one hand. On the other hand, at the village level, farmers are assisted to compute a cost-benefit analysis to determine their break-even point.

Armed with simple technologies adapted for family and community use, cassava farmers in Makueni County, Eastern Kenya have cracked open the access code to previously impenetrable markets thereby attracting various categories of buyers from far and wide making up to USD 2.3 million in the process. Having made the transition from subsistence to commercial farmers under the Cassava Commercialization and Processing Programme implemented by Farm Concern International (FCI) with support from Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the fortunes of the once impoverished peasant farmers are being transformed for the better by streamlined marketing systems and favorable market prices.

Despite its unique qualities and sheer potential, the cassava root is also highly perishable and bulky, becoming unfit for human consumption within 72 hours of harvesting. This presents immense transportation challenges. However, farmers in Makueni County were able to turn around the challenges to work in their favor through the adoption and establishment of Village Based Processing Units (VBPUs) promoted by Farm Concern International to create avenues for value addition and attract even better prices for the commodity. The result being the cumulative food security value of Cassava in Makueni in the first two years of the programme amounted to USD 2.3 million.

These mechanized innovations have taken the burden of time and uncertainty off the farmers’ minds and the immediate impact is intensive and profound with a revolutionary effect on both the production and marketing systems of cassava. By chipping and drying the cassava roots, farmers have been able to extend the shelf life of the root up to 24 months. Therefore, they are no longer in a hurry to dispose of the roots at unfavorable farm gate prices.

Working with a total of 15,750 farmers in Makueni, FCI has been promoting the organization of farmers into Commercial Villages (CVs) to ensure sustained large volumes of cassava are produced for the promotion of food security. Through the marketing and value addition committees in the Commercial Villages, farmers have been able to engage traders for better prices and favorable modes of payment. With increased prosperity from collective action, farmers have been able to transform their surplus incomes into savings through the FCI’s Commercial Village Savings (CVS) Model that encourage farmers to save and utilize their own-savings to reinvest in the planting materials, asset acquisition, labor and financing for school-fees.

With a capacity to process an average of 5,000 to 10,000 kgs of Cassava per day, the VBPUs are saving farmers (especially women) precious time to enable them take up other activities. 

Traditional processing methods involved the laborious action of peeling and cutting the cassava into chunks using kitchen knives. However, the VBPUs are hastening the transition of cassava production and marketing from subsistence level to commercialization effectively transforming the hardy root into a cash crop.

Cassava is a resilient crop, capable of withstanding poor soil and climatic conditions thus making it a reliable food security crop for millions of African households. When produced in mega-volumes, it has excellent potential for conversion to industrial use as starch, glue, animal feed supplement and power ethanol among several other uses. In anticipation of the growing demand for increased production, FCI is engaged in a partnership with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) to train village-level seed multipliers to meet the expected demand as well as to ensure adherence to stringent quality standards.

Traditionally, Rwandese farmers and traders from Kinigi section used to sell their produce based on a fixed system of estimation, rigidly controlled by the traders. Irish Potatoes are a major source of income for both traders and farmers, but farmers were always incurring losses since traders’ estimates were based on the weight of a full sack at 110 Kg. 

This continued until Farm Concern International (FCI) under the Rwanda Multi-Value Chain & Enterprise Development programme funded by World Vision Rwanda began working with farmers to sort and grade the potatoes according to size and quality. Moreover, the training involved weighing the bags on calibrated scales and creating bulking centres that also act as information centres.

When FCI came into the area, Mrs. Jaqueline Kabanza, an irish potato farmer, was reluctant to join a Commercial Village. Demoralised by the trading system, this widow had gotten used to exploitation by the traders until she started paying more attention to information being given at the bulking centres.

One day, she decided to visit a bulking centre to have her produce weighed. The total weight of her 10 sacks of onions was 1,310 kgs compared to her estimation of 1,100kgs.She sold her produce at RWF 131,000 (USD 219.8) instead of RWF 110,000 (USD 184.6) saving her RWF 21,000 (USD 35.2). As a result of that successful venture, she joined the commercial village. An evaluation conducted by FCI IN September 2011 indicated that farmers in the Commercial Producer Group were earning RWF 520,200 (USD 871) in one week.