As the world marks International day of women, Kenya’s recognition of women farmers has been dismal even as studies show that 80 percent of all Kenyan farmers are women. A paltry one percent of the  [ ... ]

A decision to quit teaching and concentrate on farming on health grounds for Mary Namaganda has turned into a promising pig business now housing over 80 pigs and giving her a tidy income of Sh 450, 00 [ ... ]

A farmer in the arid Matungulu district of Eastern Kenya is shielding himself from dry spells by embracing climate resilient farming like beekeeping and has become a model to others as thousands of cu [ ... ]

A research paper on goat milk has been the spark that has transformed an idea of an intern into a milk supply station processing over 120 litres of milk daily and now delving into yoghurt processing.  [ ... ]

A group of enterprising Kenyan women living in Minnesota US are growing and selling a rare type of plant to local stores and pharmaceutical companies, a move that has turned them into overnight millio [ ... ]

Kenya is teetering on the brink of a massive revenue loss after trade talks it initiated in 2007 with the European Union now threaten to stall following continued disagreements. The contention in the [ ... ]

In a move that promises to increase Kenya’s milk shelf life and diversify milk products offered locally, members of the Tarboi community of Western Pokot are making yoghurt from goat and cow milk th [ ... ]

Aeroponics technology which involves growing plants in air or mist environment without the use of soil or an aggregate medium and which has been common in Kenya has received another heads up with scie [ ... ]

The African Orphan Crops Consortium has initiated plans to research and develop over 100 more nutritious African crop species which were formerly neglected in a move aimed at improving the nutrition o [ ... ]

A group of researchers have been burning the midnight oil are using data collected over more than fifty years to determine the factors that result in positive and negative land use change through unde [ ... ]

A new mapping system, combining population and poverty statistics with spatial data on ecosystems and their services, graphically illustrates the relationship between land, people and prosperity in Ke [ ... ]

Insects like termites and mayflies could become a delicacy in Kenyan homes and address environmental degradation, with local scientists promoting their benefits as a simple, environmentally friendly s [ ... ]

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has announced a five-year project that seeks to increase incomes of smallholder farmers through the creation of an enabling policy environment in A [ ... ]

Over 720 fish farmers in Western Kenya no longer farm for subsistence but now run businesses where they sell fish feeds and turned into full time entrepreneurs with ready markets. Dubbed the Aqua Shop [ ... ]

A mobile phone enabled technology developed by a group of young graduates last year to help farmers in rural Africa link up with crop researchers, meteorological departments and veterinary scientists  [ ... ]

A model that allows farmers to take quick informal loans and repay them without stringent repayment measures like collateral is fast rising across Kenyan rural areas with almost every farmer belonging [ ... ]

Scientists have discovered a ‘Super grass’ that can not only help mitigate the environment against over a third of greenhouse emissions but also increase crop yields by about 50 percent and lessen [ ... ]

The over 1.5 million ducks available in Kenya could soon become the cheapest way of controlling pests and climate change if success stories of their use in other countries and new research are anythin [ ... ]

A solar powered mobile germination and seedling plant factory that halves the time seeds take to germinate while producing ten times more seeds than traditional methods has been unveiled in Uasin Gish [ ... ]

Scientists have found a low cost innovative way of storing the drought-tolerant legume,cowpeas, so as to prevent their destruction by weevils, in a move that could benefit millions of farmers across A [ ... ]

A project launched to create hundreds of productive gardens in schools and communities by cultivating indigenous plants and showing how they can generate healthy, nutritious foods has created over 200 [ ... ]

As government struggles with an acute shortage of extension officers, currently standing at one extension officer to 1200 farmers, a new model that now seeks to transform agro dealers and agricultural [ ... ]

The Kenyan government is formulating a policy to position the potato as a strategic crop, to increase the country's food security and job creation. The potato is Kenya's second most important food cro [ ... ]

News by coffee researchers in the country that new zones had been identified as the next production frontiers is not only music to the ears of the farmers in those areas but also to the country and a  [ ... ]

Pomp and fanfare best described the Premier National Farmers award which saw both large and small scale farmers feted for their novel contribution to the economy and food security. A one of its kind j [ ... ]

Thousands of farmers involved in a programme to equip them on growing seedlings of high value trees and plants are now earn decent incomes in a market fuelling a secondary markets in leaves sold to ma [ ... ]

A project in Nyanza and Western areas of Kenya to scale growing of soyabean is not only scaling household incomes, but also shielding the locals from dangers that come with over reliance on traditiona [ ... ]

In a bid to deepen awareness on the importance and adoption of agribusiness among the youth, Plant A Fruit an agricultural organization with an interest in the young people is now focusing on primary  [ ... ]

Behind rows of succulent tomatoes and towering onions planted in plastics in Nairobi’s Mathare slum, is the story of one woman’s resolve to rid the area of plastic eyesore that has not only solved [ ... ]

A company in Uganda has invented a multi purpose stove that is not only saving 50 percent of firewood used by households, but lighting up thousands of families that are hitherto not connected to the n [ ... ]

The Kenyan government in conjunction with the private sector has teamed up to reclaim the lost glory of coffee, widely known as Kenya's black gold which has has performed dismally locally even as it a [ ... ]

A farmer call center in Uganda is helping government stem the biting extension officers’ shortage in the country by courting technology that can hold one thousand calls at once, allowing as many far [ ... ]

A group of enterprising women farmers in Eastern Kenya have been working to reverse the loss of gourd diversity in the area by collecting the seeds of the gourds, planting them and upon maturity selli [ ... ]

A burgeoning demand for housing land occasioned by a boom in real estate across Africa, coupled with the discovery of natural resources is putting a strain on agricultural land and crop production, as [ ... ]

The Youth Enterprise Development Fund has widened its financing portfolio by introducing financing for egg hatching incubators to eligible entrepreneurs, rubber stamping its resolve to create more job [ ... ]

A programme designed to put women in the front seat of research and science has returned resounding success at local and policy level, having trained over 250 women scientists in Africa, majority from [ ... ]

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has launched a report on the state of agriculture in Africa, the first of its kind in the continent, that analyses the staple crops production from [ ... ]

In a bid to balance the consumption demand between animals and mankind researchers are courting sweet potato as pressure from climate change and population growth puts households at food security risk [ ... ]

The Ministry of Agriculture has launched a Sh50million electronic extension service in a bid to address the chronic shortage of extension officers and also entice more youth to agriculture at a time w [ ... ]

Kenya is among 20 African countries set to benefit from a $63million project that seeks to increase the potential of four key African crops, rice,maize, cassava, and wheat, by increasing yields of eac [ ... ]

A farming model where farmers come together to till each other's land in turn at no pay, and which was common in the nineties, is making a comeback having now assisted farmers till large pieces of lan [ ... ]

A project in Uganda and Rwanda is making low cost sanitary pads from banana stalks, assisting thousands of rural women and girls access the hitherto highly priced pads, at a time when research shows t [ ... ]

Wimaka Theuri, a resident of Nairobi's Githurai area navigates through towering lushes of maize to water his onions and cabbages in a small oasis, barely bigger than a basketball field, that has not o [ ... ]

Telecommunication masts that are a common sight in many parts of the country can now be used to predict weather patterns and provide electricity to regrigerate vaccines scientists now say. The revelat [ ... ]

The Sh16million government funded Makueni Agricultural Training Centre is set to be unveiled in the course of this year and is touted as one of the premier institutions to benefit farmers match theory [ ... ]

Amiran Kenya has launched an initiative to lure the over 10 million unemployed Kenyan youths into new age farming in a bid to reverse the perception that the venture is for the old. The company has pa [ ... ]

A 15 year project has been launched by agricultural bodies aimed at increasing staple food crop yields by 60 percent, average farm income by 50 percent and restoring 40 percent of degraded farms in ar [ ... ]

The Kenya Agricultural Institute(KARI) in collaboration with Fresh Produce and Exporters Association of Kenya (FPEAK) has launched a modern state of the art farmer training center to train farmers on& [ ... ]

Two enterprising farmers in Isinya have purchased bicycle powered maize sheller, a device that  remove grains from husks at forty times the rate of shelling by hand, a venture they are now cashin [ ... ]

Small holder farmers in Meru and Loitoktok are set to benefit from the knowledge gained from extension services to be provided by the community based Agribusiness Training Centers which will first be  [ ... ]

At a time when farmers have been busy removing weeds from their field, one woman has been busy planting them, making juices from them tripling her income and wining admiration from scientists and the  [ ... ]

Over 7,000 tyres are discarded a day in Kenya after being worn out beyond repair, yet the same tyres are proving important to hundreds of urban dwellers who are now recycling them into gardens that ar [ ... ]

Kenyan consumers are set to benefit from a more nutritious and cheaper Nile Perch Viscera Oil, rich in Omega3-fatty acids courtesy of three students from the University of Nairobi, in a venture that i [ ... ]

Kenyan households interested in biogas but struggling with the prohibitive cost of installation can now breathe easy after a project to install the biogas free of charge, but which they would later pa [ ... ]

Public schools in the country will by 2015 be expected to inculcate agribusiness in their curriculum, as government moves to shift dominant perception of agriculture as an old man's job, counting on y [ ... ]

An innovative mechanical engineering student has designed a unique bamboo umbrella, whose demand by corporates and individuals has hit sky high and is earning him more than triple what he would earn s [ ... ]

Young African Express in conjunction with the Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (CABI) has introduced Smart Farming Competition of the year, the first of its kind in the country, a camp [ ... ]

The death of a close friend after inhaling carbon monoxide from a stove has been the spark that has seen two engineering students modify a charcoal stove into a safe, environmental friendly stove that [ ... ]

Using the sun to process the much sought after Aloe sap paste produces a higher quality end product and in half the time used in conventional processing methods like using firewood a recent study by I [ ... ]

Few local producers can fund the multi-layered paper trail necessary to selling their goods beyond Kenya, in sharp contrast to Rwanda, which has unleashed an exports bulge by simplifying processes, re [ ... ]

Farmers in Africa can create a trillion-dollar food market by 2030 if they expanded their access to more capital, better technology, irrigated land and grow high-value nutritious foods says a World Ba [ ... ]

The war on climate change has gone a notch higher with the launch of a climate change resource center to aid in sharing of information across East African states and their neighbours, months after Wor [ ... ]

An ambitious pilot project launched eight months ago in Nairobi to map groundwater water which would establish quantity and quality with the aim of exploiting the water in case of emergency like droug [ ... ]

Livestock farmers in Samburu, Pokot and Turkana are among the beneficiaries of a US$56million fund from the African Development Bank (AfDB) that has been set aside to jumpstart modern day farming that [ ... ]

Farmbizafrica, is a farmers' news website launched two years ago to satisfy the growing thirst for information for farmers who have realised the impressive returns that lie in farming and agribusiness [ ... ]

A hospital in US has built a one of its kind greenhouse in the hospital precincts as it seeks to improve patients' diet and reduce food expenses, offering big lessons to Kenyan hospitals that are stru [ ... ]

Kenya is constructing a Sh27billion fertilizer factory starting next year, expected to cut fertilizer prices by up to 40 percent while bridging the acute supply shortfall that has been blamed for poor [ ... ]

The government will set aside Sh383 billion to transform agriculture into a modern, well paying job in the next three years according to the National Agribusiness Strategy launched by President Mwai K [ ... ]

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has developed an interactive, web-based mapping tool for Sub Saharan African farmers and policymakers that assists them in selecting the best i [ ... ]

The government is launching a Sh2bn national census of Kenyan farmers,which will take one-and-a half-years and survey millions of smallholders, to assist in planning better government services and del [ ... ]

Farmbizafrica was named East Africa's best media in covering youth and ICT in agriculture beating over 700 contestants in a competition organized by New Partnership for Africa’s Development Planning [ ... ]

The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) is opening a centre in Turkana, as its first new research centre in three years, as part of a drive to extend and concentrate its research on solutions [ ... ]

Africa has a huge land mass, but little to cultivate. However, new research highlighting the risk of land shortages causing civil wars and food shortages, reports that the means now exist to convert t [ ... ]

Investment firm Pearl Capital Partners (PCP) has launched a Sh2.2 billion fund to finance small businesses in agriculture and agribusiness in East Africa, following research that shows record returns  [ ... ]

New research has found that selecting seed potatoes directly from healthy mother plants can earn farmers a Sh30,000 bonus per hectare, at almost zero cost.   The norm among farmers is to sele [ ... ]

The introduction of a real time early warning system for pastoralists in the arid Turkana county has promised to halve the livestock mortality rate during droughts, offering hope to thousand of pastor [ ... ]

As interest in game farming rises driven by an emerging market for exotic meats and exotic pets, Kenya Wildlife Service has warned that anyone rearing wild animals without a game farming permit risks  [ ... ]

The Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International (CABI) has launched a global information portal on crop pest and diseases, classified by regions, in a move that could slash farm losses, following  [ ... ]

The Kenyan government is formulating a policy to position the potato as a strategic crop, to increase the country's food security and job creation. The potato is Kenya's second most important food cro [ ... ]

For one 26-year-old law graduate, who thought farmers “deserved better” than gluts of unsold bananas, the answer has been an award-winning venture producing outstandingly nutritious banana flour u [ ... ]

The University of Nairobi has established a climate change department that has crafted a whole syllabus on how regional farmers can best insulate themselves from the vagaries of weather, as reports no [ ... ]

The Kenyan government has signed an agreement with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in a bid to increase loan financing for farmers countrywide by a further $100m. The six-year Pr [ ... ]

A team of university students from Kenya has developed a software program to help farmers monitor and address weather and soil conditions, as a study by the University of Nairobi reveals that intensiv [ ... ]

A microfinance firm providing rural farmers finance for livestock and farm equipment has reached 11,000 members and now aims to be helping 100,000 farmers by 2016.

Fertiliser producers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are to get cheaper access to credit under a fertiliser investment plan prompted by research showing the region's farmers were accessing less than hal [ ... ]

A slowdown in the growth of Kenya's agricultural output in 2011, which rose 1.5 per cent compared with a rise of 6.5 per cent in 2010, has been held up as the key factor dampening overall economic gro [ ... ]

A new technology to mill dried chilli peppers four times faster than flaking by hand and twice as fast as a large mortar & pestle has found its way into Kenya from neighbouring Ethiopia, allowing  [ ... ]

Plants that suffer drought learn to deal with the stress thanks to their memories of the experience, new research has found, opening doors to the potential for developing many more crops better able t [ ... ]

Farmers are being urged to domesticate a tree species that grows wildly in Kenya and whose bark is used as an active ingredient for prostrate cancer medication, to save the tree from imminent extincti [ ... ]

Farmers in the Metkei area of Keiyo District have built a milk chilling plant that together with changes in feed and better information has transformed the earnings of now 6800 registered farmers in t [ ... ]

A group of Nzoia River farmers is to seek Kenya Bureau of Standards testing for a salt they are processing from a local reed to sell as cooking salt and to local health centres for the salt’s medici [ ... ]

Africa’s wild fruits, from Baobab fruit and Tree Grapes to Tamarindus and wild plums, are emerging as serious crops, spawning commercialisation and supporting hundreds of farmers in arid and semi ar [ ... ]

Technology is reaching increasingly into smaller businesses, with farming soon to gain its own bespoke mobile payment and management system, being showcased by Green Edge Technology at last week’s A [ ... ]

Technology has delivered a sharp lift to returns for the more than 400,000 small-scale tea farmers who sell their tea to the Kenya Tea Development Authority with the roll out of automated weighing sca [ ... ]

Innovators have begun a pilot project introducing India’s own miracle tree, the drought resistant Moringa Olifiera, to Kenyan farmers, in a bid to deliver pay-offs that include leaves that are a sup [ ... ]

The period from September to March is the peak season for tea growing in Kenya and, therefore, a time when extra help is needed to cope with the sudden rush of leaf that needs to be plucked. Tradition [ ... ]

A company providing technical farming solutions is looking for a local partner to run its network in Kenya. Pessl Instruments provides technological monitoring systems to agriculture and already has  [ ... ]

A farmers group in Murang’a district is raising Sh30m to build a banana wine making plant, following its success in creating banana wine brand, Shujaa Power, after a glut of bananas last year forced [ ... ]

At 37 years, social worker Gerald Ganja is one of 300 farmers from Kilifi County growing the wild plant Aloe Vera and harvesting it twice a year for its lucrative sap. With now more than 160 acres ass [ ... ]

The domestication by farmers living near Kakamega forest of a wild plant that cures hangovers and relieves cold symptoms has transformed the incomes and lives of 460 western Kenyan families, and now d [ ... ]

Each morning as 30-year-old Joram Karanja sets off from his home in Muchatha to work as a stone mason in Ruaka Town, he passes a wooden hut draped in passion fruit that is crammed with dried banana st [ ... ]

Farmers have gone bust over it, KPLC needs it for electricity poles, the Green Belt Movement is fighting against it being planted in the Mau forest, even as the nation cries out for tree replanting: t [ ... ]

Jeremiah Safari Kesi is a disgruntled and bitter man. He feels cheated after seeing his land given to someone else in an accelerated government process that was supposed to bring order in the allocati [ ... ]

Agricultural experts are lauding the steps Kenyan farmers are making in adopting a no tillage system of farming that increases yileds, but warn that failure to implement the system aggressively and qu [ ... ]

An overproduction of sweet potatoes by farmers in Kirinyaga district, coupled with poor pay by the dairy sector in the area, have together spawned an innovation that has moved into swift take-off, in  [ ... ]

Livestock’s contribution to the Kenyan economy is two and a half times larger than official estimates, according to a new study based on the data collected in the 2009 national census, which has est [ ... ]

A US-based charity that pledges to double income for Kenya’s poorest farmers has seen its membership increase almost five-fold since 2009.

One Acre Fund, which was founded in 2006 and relies on donor [ ... ]

A new model where individual farmers are trained so that they can themselves train fellow farmers is gaining ground in Kenya, known as farmer to farmer extension (FFE) and being driven by the governme [ ... ]

In a modest, but cost effective method that could save millions who survive on unclean water, women in Kirinyaga district Central Kenya have come up with a way of purifying water using Moringa tree se [ ... ]

Farmers in Central Kenya who have been cultivating strawberries for export have discovered an equally lucrative market for the strawberry leaves they used to discard, but which are now emerging as a c [ ... ]

A popping machine developed using locally available materials by Matayos Youth self help group with the help of a Japanese engineer is creating new snacks out of nutritious, native crops, by popping n [ ... ]

Two years ago, Amiran Kenya launched a small-holders greenhouse kit that is now being used to entice a new generation of “facebook farmers” from among high school and polytechnic students. The Ami [ ... ]

A farmer in Kieni East Division has domesticated a plant traditionally loathed by farmers and is now leading other enterprising farmers in supplying vegetable oil made from the plant to hundreds of fa [ ... ]

An international organisation is funding a breeding research program to deliver quality seeds to 400,000 local farmers, in a drive to get farmers to switch from retained seeds, which are often halving [ ... ]

Kenyan farmers are among the target audience for an ambitious “quick crop reference calendar” developed by the United Nations agriculture agency to give advice on the most appropriate crops, by cl [ ... ]

Behind the Ministry of Agriculture’s National Sericulture Station in Thika lies an ambitious government plan to elevate Kenya into world class silk production alongside global leaders China and Indi [ ... ]

Researchers have identified six genetically modified (GM) orphan crops; they say will shield East African farmers from the effects of climate change and ensure food security. The crops are all pest re [ ... ]

A new breed of agropreneurs, buoyed by good returns from their land, is shifting from rudimentary farming methods to renting and buying sophisticated farming inputs in a bid to further boost their inc [ ... ]

Financing for smallholder farmers is growing at its fastest pace ever, according to micro financiers, some of which report a tripling of loans dispersed to agricultural producers in 2010, compared wit [ ... ]

The development of the financial services sector, fast-tracked through international initiatives, is emerging as potentially transformatory for agriculture in East Africa, with up to 40,000 farmers in [ ... ]

A small village in Bura-Tana is home to Samuel Mwangi, who has lived amid a vast expanse of aggressively rambling mesquite bushes, known locally as mathenge, for 20 years. He lived here even before th [ ... ]

Each year, the bumpy 97 hectares of Jamhuri show grounds are host to an agricultural extravaganza of new crops, equipment, buyers, sellers, business options and even fantastical sideshows, for the Nai [ ... ]

The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) is trialling the highest yielding potato seed ever developed for Kenyan farmers, ahead of a planned release in April 2011 of three new potato breeds fo [ ... ]

A two-year initiative by Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) to equip small holder farmers to grow seedlings of high value trees and plants is now generating significant incomes and fuelling a s [ ... ]

Harvesting honey from hives hung by wires or in old logs has long been a source of small incomes for farmers in the dry regions, but in the last two years, commercial honey harvesting is taking off ac [ ... ]

Two new higher yielding, virus and nematode resistant hybrid tomato breeds from Spain have been introduced to Kenyan farmers. The two new breeds Tylka F1 and Kilele F1 are targeted at growers using gr [ ... ]

Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) maize breeding division at Muguga has released three new mid-altitude hybrid maize varieties, which they say guarantee farmers five to ten per cent more yi [ ... ]

For long regarded as “poor man’s” food, nine new improved cassava breeds have been released.  These new varieties are high yielding, fast maturing, drought and cassava mosaic virus resistan [ ... ]

Even as the rain pours, we are beset with warnings that as soon as the rain stops we shall return to drought and water shortages. In Nairobi, the tap water rationing still continues. The problem, says [ ... ]