POTATO FARMING IN BOMET COUNTY.

BY PATRICK NGENOH

In the quest to quench the thirst of shortage of qual­ity potato seed in Bomet County, the USAID funded Kenya Agricultural Value Chains Enterprises Project working with Deepa Industries, the processors of Tropical Heat brand of crisps approached Midlands Sacco to interest its members to venture into seed multiplication in 2019.

Jane Langat, a 46 year-old farmer attended a training­ session and took interest in the business. Bomet is a key potato growing county, the preferred source by processors. Production is however hampered by shortage of good quality seed potato.

For this reason, Mrs Langat developed interest in multiplying seed to tap the opportunity to make some money. After the training he took a soil sample and the results turned positive for potato without having to do much since her land was still virgin.

She bought three 100kg bags of starter seed from the Agricultural Development Corporation and planted them on 0.095 acres. After following all instructions as directed by the local agriculture extension officer he harvested 15 bags from each seed bag, giving himself­ 30 90kg bags of seed. He sold them and earned Sh 25,000.

Encouraged by the demand and good earnings, she has since expanded to two acres where she is expect­ing to reap 80 bags. She has no intention of growing ware potatoes but fully concentrate on seed multiplic­ation. As she waits for rains to subside to start har­vesting, her seed has already been booked by farmers.

She has subdivided her farm into blocks to enable crop rotation to avoid soil overuse and build-up of dis­eases.

KAVES, that is implementing some of USAID’s food security support programmes under the Feed The Fu­ture initiative, ventured into potato to increase pro­ductivity and income for smallholders as part of its target of assisting about 500,000 farmers to im­prove productivity and incomes across selected agri­cultural value chains in five years.

“We picked the potato from our value chains studies which indicate the tuber is big from the beginning to the end of the chain and positioned as food security crop number two in Kenya after maize and mainly grown by smallholders”, said  kaves chief party.

Kenya is dependent on maize which has been at­tacked by various pests and diseases threatening the country's food security. An attack by Maize Lethal Necrosis disease and lately army worms forced a shift to alternatives and potatoes were a natural choice for Bomet as well as other counties in the North Rift region.

A cost benefit analysis shows there is money to be made in potato farming. However, the potato value chain is encumbered in problems from start to finish. Studies show that seed, storage, agronomy, market systems, consumption and everything else about potato is loaded with challenges amidst a huge po­tential to create a robust sector like it is in Europe where they eat potatoes all the time either as roast, boiled, fried and more.

A lot has been done towards sorting these problems to increase productivity, the most notable being avail­ability of a wider selection of varieties but the in­dustry woes are still far. Top hotels are still import­ing frozen chips due to lack of suitable varieties with the right texture, shape and taste, said Dr New.

Marketing systems are still disorganized leading to disparities between farm and markets prices. Farm­ers are on the tail end of the bargain as brokers dic­tate the farm gate prices.

Storage remains a nightmare in the potato value chain creating an immediate need for county govern­ments to build coolers for farmers to use for storage and marketing. "We cannot have a potato industry without refrigeration. You get best prices six months after harvesting and for this to be achieved farmers need technologies like small tractors for effi­ciency”, he added.

According to the Agriculture Sector Development Sup­port Programme - Coordinator in Bomet county, Evelyne Mwangangi,a value chain approach analysis in the potato sector unearthed major challenges from in­puts supply to exit (markets). "Clean seeds supply is a challenge because producers are doing one variety here - the Dutch Robin being the preferred type by processors.

Bomet Potato farmer.

Over the past two years the seed supply has been er­ratic. The County government has been trying to as­sist by bulking but it hasn't helped much. "We reached a few farmers", said Mrs Mwangangi adding that due to the declining productivity, processors are going to Narok County denying Bomet farmers the much needed income.

The potato woes in Bomet are exacerbated by poor post harvest handling leading to high losses due to reliance on rainfall production. "When rains are good harvests are good and the opposite obtains if the trend is in the reverse. During glut farmers don't sell due to poor market links. Brokers take advant­age and buy the produce at throwaway prices since farmers have to sell to avoid losing the harvest.

According to Dr New, this can be addressed by estab­lishment of cold storage facilities where farmers can store potatoes for longer enabling controlled selling. The facilities would also ease buyers’ pain and costs of having to move from farm to farm collecting pota­toes.

To mitigate against seasonal production the govern­ment of Bomet is building a mega dam to supply ir­rigation water and enable year-round production.

Mrs Mwangangi has urged the development partners in Bomet to work together to solve the challenges in­stead of duplicating efforts with reduced impact.

The National Potato Council of Kenya has compiled a catalogue of potato varieties available in the country and a list of dealers to enable farmers access inform­ation on where to purchase what seeds.

Among the seed producers are - Kisima, Karlo, ADC, Syngenta, Suera, Agreco, GTIL, Leah Rono, Gen-Bi­otech, Grace Rono, Singus Enterprises and Julius Kan­die. Farmers can also get clean tubers from Kimingi Farm, Narok.

Failure to enforce the 2013 packaging at 50kg/bag law to eradicate the extended bags malpractice has continued hampering profitability and quality of pota­toes. According to the Kenya National Potato Produ­cers Association, only Meru County has succeeded in this endeavor, an indication that other growing re­gions could succeed if they committed to kick out the exploitative method.