Homabay County groundnut farmers have gotten farming contracts with Kenyan peanut processors assuring them of a ready market for their produce.
The Kenya Association of Manufacturers with its partners Premier Foods, Tru Foods, Kenya Nut, and Greenforest is advising over 1,000 farmers of the Homa Bay County Peanut Co-operative Society on the production of peanut varieties and grades that are fit for processing, assuring farmers of offtaking 100 per cent of their nuts.
In 2022 Kenya imported 6.3 billion worth of groundnuts for industrial processing. 90 per cent of this came from Malawi with the rest gotten from Argentina, India, Tanzania, and the United Arab Emirates. By contrast, the value of locally produced groundnuts was just two million shillings.
According to the KAM chief executive Antony Mwangi, most of the locally produced groundnuts do not meet processing grade, and Kenya lacks a streamlined groundnut value chain.
Under its Agriculture for Industry (A4I) initiative, KAM– the representative organisation for manufacturers in Kenya– seeks to connect farmers and agro-processors.
“It is a tragedy that we have farmers who are growing groundnuts without off-takers for their produce, while at the same time, manufacturers fire up their machines but lack the right raw materials from our farmers,” he said.
The traditional groundnut-producing counties in Nyanza and Western regions have over the years cut down their production as a result of land fragmentation and unreliable seed multiplication and distribution systems.
Homabay County is Kenya’s leading groundnut grower both in volume and acreage, producing Sh718,000 worth of nut in 2022. However, the area under peanut production in the county decreased by 1,063 hectares in 2022. This was mirrored in Kenya as a whole. The area under peanuts reduced from 14,274Ha reported in 2021 to 12,788Ha in 2022 with production decreasing 148 MT as farmers switched to growing staple food crops such as maize and beans.
Inquiries:
Kenya Association of Manufacturers
0722201368
Greenforest:
0745 322311
Premier Foods:
0722 440 461
Kenya Nut Company Ltd
Tru Foods:
Read more:
Groundnut manufacturers seek farmers to plug country’s nut deficit
No regrets for former Kakamega cane grower as he triples income from groundnuts
New dwarf coconut cuts growing time in half wooing coast farmers back