By Kimuri Mwangi The Kenya National Farmers’ Federation (KENAFF) and iCRA have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at delivering world-class agribusiness training to farmers across Kenya. KENAFF has partnered with iCRA which is a foundation based in the Netherlands, with over 35 years of experience in education, research, innovation, and agribusiness with a focus on strengthening agriculture value chains. The MOU was signed on 21st March at KENAFF Headquarters in Thogoto, Kikuyu with the farmers federation’s Chief Executive Officer Daniel Mwendah representing it while Cees Peter v ..read more

By David Ndegwa What determines the size of an onion nursery? The area of land intended to be planted. The plant population to be adopted. Let’s say in this case we pick 1 acre to be planted under drip irrigation. 1 acre is 4000m² and therefore we can take convenient dimensions like 80m by 50m. Let’s opt for a 1m bed and 70cm or 60cm pathways so, 1.7m bed plus pathways.  The No of beds to be made along the 80m length = 48 beds of 50m length. We want to have 8 rows of onions with 4 driplines in a bed. An ideal onion diameter is approx. 7cm and therefore we adopt 8cm between seedlings. Us ..read more

By David Ndegwa Let’s try and figure out the demand for onions in Kenya and try to appreciate the magnitude of the onion business in Kenya. Onion is a common vegetable used by almost all homesteads in the country.  Let’s make some few assumptions in trying to understand the onions demand in Kenya. Let’s assume that Kenya has a population of approximately 50million with an average of 5 people per household = 10m households. Let’s also assume that each homestead uses 1 onion (big or small) per day translating to 10,000,000 onion bulbs per day. So, on average how many bulbs makes a kilogram ..read more

Mark Zuckerberg, the Co-founder of social media network Facebook has announced his entry into farming. Zuckerberg announced through the social media network that he had started raising cattle at Ko’olau Ranch on Kauai, and his goal is to create some of the highest quality beef in the world. He has also become a macadamia farmer since he is feeding the cows with macadamia meal. “The cattle are wagyu and angus, and they’ll grow up eating macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch. We want the whole process to be local and vertically integrated. Each cow eats 5,00 ..read more

By Kimuri Mwangi Winners from the CGIAR Food Systems Accelerator’s first cohort of agribusinesses from East and Southern Africa have been announced. The program supports agribusinesses in their climate-smart solutions to the farmers that they work with within their supply chains as well as to the broader ecosystem. “We thought of how we could attract more capital into agriculture. I think everybody agrees in both the private and public sectors that this is a priority that has a huge impact economically and socially. There are still some challenges however around catalyzing that finance, p ..read more

Heifer International announced the winners of the 2023 AYuTe Africa Challenge Kenya in a Gala Awards ceremony held in Nairobi. The global non-profit organization working to end hunger and poverty in low- and middle-income countries awarded cash grants and scholarships to eight winners. This year’s winners were drawn from two categories namely ideation and product-stage. Category One aimed at startups in the early idea phase, requiring evidence of concept viability, a basic functional product and/or a prototype. Category Two aimed at startups with innovations that have already been rolled out i ..read more

By Kimuri Mwangi Granot International Company, one of the biggest producers and packers of avocados has officially launched its operations in Kenya. Granot operates the largest avocado packing house in Israel and produces one-third of Israel’s total avocado yield. With an annual revenue of more than USD 1.5 billion, it is one of the largest cooperatives in the world. Granot Cooperative includes 20 factories and corporations, mainly focused on agriculture and the needs of the Kibbutzim, their communities and members. Israeli Ambassador in Kenya Michael Lotem plants an avocado at Granots avocado ..read more

By Kimuri Mwangi When Covid 19 came calling, it shattered many careers and investments leaving a trail of anger, desperation and poverty among many people. For Ibrahim Kamau, the period found him and a group of fellow youth tending their tree nursery near Nyeri town. It wasn’t easy for them too as the business had been affected by the pandemic not mentioning other challenges like fetching water from a distance and watering the seedlings which were about five to seven thousand daily. The task became tough and many members of the group left and eventually he found himself with his friend Martin ..read more

Tanzanian Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Hussein Bashe has congratulated the youth who benefited from the Ministry’s Building a Better Tomorrow (BBT) program as they have started harvesting and selling their produce, Speaking to some of the youth who visited his office on July 17, 2023, in Dodoma to thank him and also brought some of the produce, Hon. Bashe said he was very pleased with the results.  The youth are based at the Bihawana Centre in Dodoma. Bashe encouraged the young people to expand the scope of distributing their harvest to various areas in Dodoma, including public offices i ..read more

 If you visit a small scale farmer, you are most likely to see a small portion mostly at the corner of their big farm covered with dry grass or sometimes with an improvised shade made up of sticks and banana leaves. This is their seed nursery where they raise most of their seed. The other alternative is buying seedlings from the local market or their neighbours.  (Kilimo News) One problem that affects mostly horticulture farmers is raising healthy seedlings. Seedlings require a lot of care and the right conditions before they can be transplanted. The fact that most farmers have stuck ..read more