Tackling Food Security through Developing the Irish Potato Value Chain in Kenya
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) defines food security as “when people have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for active and healthy life.”
Food security has become a major concern particularly in Africa as result of population growth. In Kenya, for example, population is growing at the rate of 2.8%. In 2008 the population was estimated to be about 38 million people. But at the same time agricultural productivity is declining due to fragmentation of agricultural land, declining soil fertility and shortage of clean and good quality seed and planting material as well as general high cost of farm inputs. In 2007 the Kenya Economic Review in Agriculture indicates that 51% of the population lack adequate food, and this is closely linked to poverty, which is at 46%. The inverse relationship between population growth and agricultural production, coupled with frequent droughts and unpredictable rainfall patterns threaten the equilibrium of food supply and demand, which currently is mainly maize based.
Largely, Kenya’s population depends on maize as the main food item. The major area of conflict is that the same maize is over 80% the basis used in animal feed manufacturing. This places a lot of pressure on maize leading to cyclic food shortages. Irish potato development could take off this pressure, as it has higher yields per unit area (7-10 tons per ha) compared to maize (2-3.5 tons per ha) based on current yields at farm level. At the same time potatoes grow well in high rainfall areas above 2.000m A.S.L where maize takes up to 10 months to mature. In the same areas potato can be grown and harvested continuously as there are favourable climatic conditions. Irish potatoes could be the crop of the future as a food security and poverty reduction measure.
Among the world’s non-graminaceous crops, the Irish potato is the most important source of food. The potato tuber ranks fourth after wheat, rice, and maize. In Kenya it even ranks number two following maize. It is also the most important crop with a perishable yield. The potato consists of about 80% water and 20% solids. In addition to calories and protein, potato is a vital source of vitamins, potassium and fibre. The recommended daily allowance of vitamin C could be obtained from the potato only. Finally, it is a major ingredient for weaning foods. Contrary to popular misconceptions about potatoes being fattening and low in food value, the ratio of protein to carbohydrates is higher in potato than in many cereals.
In Kenya potatoes are almost entirely sold in the domestic market. The increasing demand for potatoes is linked to changes in consumption habits, mainly in urban centres, where chips have become a more and more popular part of the diet during the past decade. Chips processing has become the major form of value addition for potatoes.
Consumption patterns of potatoes deserve special attention, since they fall between the categories of starchy staple food (inferior goods) and fresh vegetable (luxury goods). Three quarters of the urban households consume potatoes regularly, on average 5 kilograms per adult per month. Apart from households, restaurants, hotels and canteens are major potato consumers.
Potato has a high potential for addressing food insecurity due to its high productivity per unit area. It can also be grown for two and even three seasons in a year, depending on the climatic conditions. The ability to produce large volumes of consumable products from a small unit area makes it an attractive commodity for enhancing food supply. It is also a good pro-poor crop due to its high yield potential compared to other crops, especially in Kenya where fragmentation of farms has lead to small scale producers comprising 80% of agricultural producers.
Potatoes in Rural Markets
Data collected by GTZ PSDA indicate that market oriented potato farmers who follow technical recommendations on good agricultural practices and use clean or certified seeds achieve yields of about 50 tons per ha and season. The effects on income flow are considerable. The farmer enjoys a farm family income of KES 288,500[1] per ha and a return of KES 704 per family labour day which is about 4 times higher than what a casual labourer can earn. Potato cultivation requires 410 person-days per ha and is therefore very efficient in employment creation. Usually a farm household cannot supply all the labour needed and has to employ about 70% of all labour needed as casual labour. Therefore this enterprise is highly pro-poor: it creates substantial employment and income. PSDA’s labour studies have also shown that women (49%) and men (51%) are nearly equally involved in the operations. Some of the operations are of a heavy duty nature and thus require young men. So, in Kenya, apart from being pro-poor and gender-balanced, the enterprise usually also creates employment opportunities for the often under-employed youth.
In urban centres, the industry employs about a million people as marketing agents, transporters, chips and crisps processors and vendors, while in rural areas it involves about 500,000 farm households and absorbs about 1.5 million mainly as farm labour thus contributing to a very sizeable creation of employment.
The value chain
A Value Chain (VC) is defined as the chain of activities, which transform raw materials into something that can be purchased and used by a final consumer.
The analysis of the potato value chain revealed weaknesses along the whole chain. There were no linkages between the various actors, value chain facilitators and service providers leading to myriads of challenges along the chain (the orange arrows in the diagram above).
At the farm inputs node, (see red arrows in the diagram) there is severe shortage of clean planting materials in the country. The national demand for the clean[2] and certified seed is estimated to be about 80, 000 tons per season. Currently there is less than 1% certified and about 4% clean seed potato of the total national seed potato demand available.
Farm production is far below the expectation in terms of productivity and quality. The yield levels are about 7tons per ha against a potential of 50tons. The quality of the produce is generally very poor. The crop is often harvested immature leading to lower yields and heavy post-harvest losses.
Interventions
One way of addressing food security is increasing agricultural productivity. Towards this end improvement of seed potato has been placed high on the national agenda of potato production, in order to avail to farmers clean and high quality planting materials. Efforts made underscore the benefits of the value chain approach in development of the enterprise for both income generation and to boost food supply. The better all partners in a value chain cooperate and communicate, the more the business relations will be characterised by fair trade standards, the higher will be the value generated for the individual operator at every stage of the value chain. Encouragement of fair trade standards would facilitate identification of realistic economic and social benefits for all VC partners, creates awareness about this economic benefit, helps in building capacities of all partners to apply the fair trade standards, encourages emergence of trustful, reliable and long-term business linkages. Linkages among the stakeholders in the sub-sector have been created.
GTZ-PSDA started in the promotion of the potato value chain with a value chain analysis leading to the identification of the necessary interventions. It has since forged strong collaborative linkages with other international organisations such as the International Potato Center (CIP), USAID and national institutions both in the public and private sector. The activities include training farmers on [3]positive seed selection, introduction of the aeroponics technology and drawing a national seed potato master plan.
Aeroponics Technology
To address the shortage of seed potatoes the aeroponics technology, a special type of hydro-culture, has been introduced into the country. Two private sector organizations, and one public institution, are applying the technology to produce 1st generation (basic seed) clean planting material.
The aeroponics technology was introduced to Kenyans representatives of key stakeholder institutions, who visited Vietnam in 2007 and found the technology working very well there in improving seed potato availability. The trip was organised by GTZ PSDA with the objective of exposing the participants to developments that have taken place in other parts of the world, with the intention of learning useful lessons in potato research, farmer organisations and marketing that could be used to improve potato programmes and activities in Kenya. Vietnam was chosen due to a similar GTZ supported potato programme in that country. It has similar challenges on seed production and acquisition, similar challenges in potato storage, has an efficiently organised research grounding programme that is closely coupled with an organized technology transfer system and strong public private partnerships. Like in Kenya potato production is small holder based.
Potato growing using the aeroponics technology
The production of high-grade basic seed remains a key constraint in the development of a competitive potato seed industry in Eastern and Central Africa including Kenya. Clean seed is required to input disease free material into the apex of any potato seed multiplication system as a so-called “flush through” mechanism. Typically, mini-tubers are produced in insect proof screen-houses from disease free plantlets produced in tissue culture. The production of mini-tubers in soil or compost based substrate is limited by the natural multiplication rate of the crop which is typically only about 6:1 (while it is about 50:1 in the aeroponics technology) as well as the increasing cost of energy needed to sterilize large quantities of substrate (following the international ban on the use of methyl bromide as a soil sterilant). Many national programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Kenya, also face serious land constraints in providing enough land required to multiply high grade input seed.
The National Seed Potato Master Plan
To address the existing bottlenecks and develop an organized, effective and sustainable seed potato system, a master plan that gives a road map on how to transform the country from seed potato shortage to a country that covers the demand for seed potatoes adequately was developed. The master plan spells out the tasks involved in this transformation, giving details of the current constraints, how to address these constraints and spelling out steps each player and stakeholder should take to effect the turn around and the role the government should play to oversee sustained development of the sub-sector.
All these concerns and efforts culminated into the appointment of a National Potato Taskforce by the Ministry of Agriculture to evaluate the reasons for poor performance along the whole potato value chain. The task force is complemented by a team of scientists who were charged with the duty of studying the seed potato sub sector. Developing a seed master plan was the first major output of the task force.
The next step is the implementation of the recommendations of the National Potato Task Force and the Seed Potato Master plan. The Kenya Government in collaboration with donors and other national and international partners supports the establishment of a private sector led National Potato Council. The body will be charged with overseeing the reorganisation and development of the potato industry including putting in place a reliable and sustainable seed potato system.
Contact: Gladys Maingi, Francis Muthami and Dr. Eberhard Krain, Private Sector Development in Agriculture (PSDA), Kenya,
1
[1] 1 € is about 100 Kenya Shilling (KES)
[2] Clean seed is seed that has been grown according to all technical recommendations from basic or certified seed but has not undergone certification process.
[3] Positive seed selection is way of improving own seed by farmers through a process of selecting the best plants in the field during the growing period.