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Farmer’s 7-year labour tripling potato grower profits

FreshCrop
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The frustrations of losing out to middlemen and struggling to get quality seed pushed Chris Gasperi into a sleepless seven-and-a-half-year journey to produce a full potato-farmer kit from seed to sale that is now tripling farmers’ earnings.

Today, his company FreshCrop’s one-acre pack programme helps thousands of smallholder farmers increase their incomes by 233 per cent and pocket Sh123,500 in profits from a single acre.

Like the rest of his potato farming journey in Kenya, Chris’s first foray into potatoes in 2016 was frustrating and unprofitable. 

“We had just moved from the USA to Kenya to work for an NGO that delivered clean water and sanitation. Being the son of a farmer I was keen to see what line of agriculture I could get in Nakuru where we bought our first four-acre price of land,” he said.

Most farmers around him grew maize, beans, and potatoes and he opted for the latter. Once his potatoes were ready, he harvested them in 55Kg bags as he had agreed with brokers. However, once they got to his farm, he learned that for Kenyan brokers, a 55-kilo bag is actually double that. “This was before the government mandated that potato sacks not exceed 50 kilos, the guy kept piling up the potatoes until the bag weighed 110 kilograms.”

When he finished selling his tubers, the Philadelphia native made zero profit.

“We stayed close to Nakuru town which was where most of the off-takers of these potatoes were, so I decided to walk into all the international schools, big and small hotels and asked if they’d be interested in getting potatoes directly from my farm,” he explained.

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Once he had a few of the institutions on board he would load the potatoes in his car and transport them directly to the buyers. As the orders kept on coming he also contracted his neighbour farmers in Nakuru who were grappling with the same broker struggles he had endured. 

In 2018 he got big orders for potatoes and had secured lucrative contracts which he expected to meet by contracting farmers to supply me with potatoes. Unfortunately, when he went to KALRO to pick up his certified seeds he was told that they would not have them for the next one and a half to two years because their potato seeds crop had failed.

Despondent, he met with neighbouring farmers for solutions and he opted to grow safe seeds from other farmers. “The potatoes got through the season but unfortunately they contaminated my farm with potato cyst nematodes,” he recounted.

He channeled his disappointment into searching for opportunities for how he could produce his own potato seeds. Through internet research, he connected with Monica Parker the International Potato Centre’s (CIP) research program head on apical root cuttings for rapid potato seed multiplication in Kenya 

“CIP helped me set up my first demo of apical root cuttings from which I got a 100 per cent seed survival rate. The researchers encouraged me to get into the potato seed production space,”  Gasperi said.

He first got a 45-acre farm which marked the official birth of FreshCrop. As he had learned by then, it was never going to be smooth sailing. Because it takes five generations to get to a certified potato seed starting from tissue culture, the farm wasn’t big enough to quickly produce planting seeds.

He went big with 4,000 acres in Narok and ramped up seed multiplication.

FreshCrop today has branches in nine counties, Nakuru, Narok, Nyandarua, Elgeyo Marakwet, Nandi, Kiambu, Kitale, Bomet, and Uasin Gishu and distributes 5.5 to six million certified seeds annually to more than 10,000 mainly smallholder farmers.

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“Our farmers get to choose whether they want to just buy certified potato seeds from us or our Sh135,000 one-acre plan. It includes the seeds, a free soil test that guides a customised fertiliser application plan, your nearest Hello tractor agent contacts, a list of agrochemicals that have been tested to be the very best in the Kenyan market, and a pesticide application calendar. It also guarantees farmers a ready market once their potatoes are ready.

The company’s stated target is to cover every stage of the potato value chain in Kenya. This includes seed production, multiplication, provision of extension, mechanisation, and credit services as well as market linkages to farmers.

Farmers who have been using the pack which is customised for their soils and climate since 2021 have lifted their per acre earnings from Sh78,196 to Sh258,500 with the help of the guide that tells them how much fertiliser and pesticides to use at different stages when growing an acre of potatoes and access to both planting and harvesting tractor services

FreshCrop has bought all the agrochemicals available in Kenya and tested them on their demo farms. This information is what they have used to develop the one-acre package. 

Through its network of 150 ambassadors, the company has offtaken 800,000 tonnes of potatoes this season from farmers who used their one-acre pack.

“Previously we entered into contracts where we bought potatoes at fixed prices. That wasn’t workable because when prices go up farmers are inclined to sell to brokers. This leaves our buyers with unmet demand,”

Now FreshCrop only offers a minimum price which ensures that even when prices dip farmers can still make money. When the prices rise, the firm uses a variable model. This means they actively adjust their prices with the market. 

The potatoes are aggregated and sold to the country’s main processors as well as sold to brokers and consumers from their two stands in Marikiti and Kongowea markets in Nairobi and Mombasa respectively.

The company is constructing a 20-acre industrial park to process fresh and frozen french fries. 

Gasperi whose dad worked in agriculture value addition adds that the plant will have a black soldier fly facility which will be used to turn the waste from potato production– one of the main headaches for the processors he had visited– to frass which will be sold back to their farmers for fertiliser.

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FreshCrop has supplied 7,000 bags of certified seed through farmer credit programs with an impressive 97 per cent repayment rate.

“Because most farmers use MPesa, they often do not have an active bank account. This made it impossible to find banks willing to extend loans to them. However, for our one-acre farmers, we were able to secure loans for them from a credit union by partnering with their dairy cooperatives, which the credit union had existing ties with. The loans extended to them were directly collateralized through the cows in their farms. This works perfectly for us because often one of our farmer’s zero-grazed cows is valued at Sh135,00– an amount that is almost exactly that of the price of our one-acre package,” he explained.


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