Nakuru potato farmers told to buy certified seeds to boost trade

Lack of certified seeds and poor marketing strategies have continued to hamper the lucrative potato trade in Nakuru County.

Nakuru is the second largest producer of the crop in Kenya after Nyandarua County.

In Nakuru, there are about 20,000 farmers growing potatoes on more than 38,000 acres of land with a total production of 160,000 tonnes of assorted varieties being grown.

CHALLENGES

In a bid to address these challenges, the National Potato Council of Kenya (NPCK) has launched a campaign to give farmers marketing tips dubbed Business to Business (B2B) marketing strategies.

The approach seeks to create direct linkages between farmers and potato buyers.

Speaking during a Potato Marketing Forum in Nakuru on Wednesday, chief executive officer National Potato Council of Kenya, Wachira Kaguongo, urged farmers to buy the right seeds if they hope to have a competitive edge in the market.

“The quality of potato seeds is critical because bad seeds will give you poor yields and this will not fetch you good money in the market,” said Mr Kaguongo.

The NPCK boss assured farmers that his organisation was working closely with the Nakuru County agriculture department and Kenya Plants Health Inspectorate Services (Kephis) to develop high yielding disease resistant varieties to improve farmers' yields and income.

PACKAGING

County executive in charge of Agriculture, Immaculate Njuthe Maina, commended the efforts made by NPCK to help the farmers and traders in the region.  

“Potato is one of the leading crops in Nakuru County and the devolved unit is committed to ensuring farmers earn more through enforcing stringent measures on packaging and provision of certified seeds to the farmers,” said Dr Maina.

She said that due to lack of information, many local farmers were not aware that there are many potato varieties apart from the popular shangi.

“I am happy NPCK is working closely with the county government to help farmers and traders come together and exchange ideas on the new regulations that would help them penetrate the market and sell their produce at the recommended prices,” said Dr Maina.

Mr Joseph Kinyanjui a small scale potato farmer in Nakuru said that the new approach by the county government and other potato stakeholders would help farmers earn more income.

EXPLOITATION

“This is now a win-win situation as both the traders and farmers will reap from their sweat as there will be no more exploitation. The stakeholders will be guided by the laid down regulations and terms and conditions of the contract,” said Mr Kinyanjui.

A trader, Ms Winnie Kagendo said the approach would reduce the time taken by traders to search for the produce in the farms.

 “With this kind of arrangement, it would be easy to access the produce in the farms since we shall be dealing with specific farmers,” said Ms Kagendo.

She lauded the potato council for the initiative saying, “processors would be able to get varieties that are in demand.”

Mr Kaguongo urged farmers to use the NPCK ‘Viazi Soko’ platform to develop new linkages with other stakeholders along the potato value chain, saying this will unlock more markets.

The national potato council has launched a similar programme in other potato growing counties of Meru, Uasin Gishu and Nyandarua to boost production countrywide.