The next big thing for the youth and women

NYORI MBUGUA of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology’s Directorate of Extension and Technology Transfer trains women and youth on agribusiness. He spoke to BILLY MUIRURI about this emerging fertile ground.

What is value chain?

It is the sum total of all activities carried out for a specific product to increase its value in the market. They start at input supply, production, processing, bulking, marketing and consumption. They may include processing, repackaging, market diversification and branding.

What is the place of youth with little capital in all this?

We are cultured to believe we can only be involved in agriculture through actual farming and production, and that it is expensive to take part in the other areas of the agricultural value chain.

Some value chain engagements constitute service provision such as transport, repackaging, re-orienting the market or just service provision at a particular functional level.

Take dairy farming for example. You may need more than Sh150,000 to get a good quality cow for a profitable dairy venture. And you have not even done any structure for the cow, veterinary services and feeds.

With the same money, a youth can acquire equipment to process milk into yoghurt, or buy and repackage silage or hay or even formulate feeds at cottage level.

Another example is on fruits. Instead of growing fruits that require land and other inputs and take long to get return on investment, one can venture into making and selling freshly squeezed juices, jams, food sauces or vegetable juices.

You may need Sh50 to buy enough fruits to make a litre of fresh juice. This litre will have three glasses which can sell at about Sh100 each.

You see, from Sh50, you get Sh300. This can be done at home using basic equipment meaning those with minimal resources can afford it.

A kilo of cassava goes for Sh12 at the farm, Sh20 after post-harvest packaging, Sh45 from the brokers, Sh60 after processing and Sh100 at the supermarket. A litre of raw camel milk can go for Sh70, but once processed, it costs Sh160 or more.

To what extent has Kenya embraced value addition in agribusiness?

We are doing less than 30 per cent of what would make significant change to ensure returns on our agriculture enterprises.

Farmers need training on modern technology to maximise production and earnings as well as promotion of value chains in agriculture.

We should emphasise the departure from mere farming to agribusiness to enable farmers reap the best from their investments.

We should train farmers, value chain actors, service providers, aspiring entrepreneurs and practitioners. Value addition is the next big thing.

What would you advise counties that heavily depend on agriculture?

They need to identify suitable value chains to promote instead of focusing on same enterprises at the same time.

Countries like Japan, China, South Africa, Malaysia and Thailand have key lessons. In the latter two, they created satellite villages for specific produce.

Efforts should be directed towards optimising value in specific agriculture products through investing in research and technology, input supply systems, processing, marketing and market research.