App to hook up farmers with buyers

The International Fertiliser Development Corporation has launched a software to help connect farmers with agriculture enterprises for purposes of enhancing production and marketing.

According to the entity’s agribusiness clusters adviser for Kenya, Mr Peter Kirimi, the system, E-Prod, is designed for enterprises working with large number of farmers for purposes of monitoring deliveries, enabling timely payments, ensuring accurate record keeping and tracking production patterns of different producers.

“E-Prod in itself is an innovation that can be used even by the smallest agribusiness,” Mr Kirimi told the Nation after the launch of the application in Nairobi yesterday.

The programme is part of the organisation’s 2Scale agribusiness project, which started in 2012 to help farmers boost their bargaining power, especially when dealing with large-scale buyers.

The application, which has been on pilot basis since 2013, is being used by firms such as Malindi-based Equator Kenya Limited to manage its producer organisations.

“Using E-Prod, an administrator can handle transactions for more than 5,000 farmers. This is a huge saving in time and staff costs,” said Almut van Casteren, a director of Equator Kenya.

A plant manager at Eldoville Dairies, Mr Andrew Waithaka, says the company uses the system to track how milk farmers perform.

“It takes less than 15 minutes to enter all production data for a group of 150 farmers,” Mr Waithaka noted.