Taveta banana farmers adopt technology for more earnings

Banana farmers in Taveta have embraced a new multiplication technology to earn more and increase food security.

The technology allows them to produce tissue culture seedlings for a bumper harvest.

The farmers are also eying value addition to increase their earning from the crop.

The Taita Taveta Banana Cooperative Society is planning to establish a project on rapid multiplication technology for tissue culture seedlings at Kitobo.

The project will help farmers produce their own seedlings and cut the cost of purchasing them.

“The new initiative will ease the burden on farmers who have to get seedlings from Kiambu to Taveta at Sh160 per seedling. We will sell each seedling at Sh40,” Ndelejai Msangi, the treasurer of the cooperative said.

The project is a partnership between the farmers, county and the USAID-funded Kenya Crops and Dairy Market Systems.

KCDMS is co-investing with private companies to promote value addition and facilitate commercial linkages and buyer contracts between off-takers and smallholder farmers.

The partnership, Ndelejai said, has led to improved banana markets and technology advancement among small holder farmers.

“Under this partnership, we have been trained on new farming technologies which are more productive and resistant to diseases,” he said.

“Farmers have moved from the traditional way of selling bananas in bunches to selling them in kilogrammes, thus earning more.”

Following increased production, Taveta  has been become the food basket for the Coast region.

Further, the county is now the second banana producer countrywide, recording an increment of  10 per cent in productivity.

More than 6,000 banana farmers have increased banana acreage from 2,080 hectares in 2017 to at least 4,104 hectares.

This has lead to an estimated production of more than 65,280 tonnes.

According to Agriculture and Livestock executive Davies Mwangoma, the tissue culture varieties are high-yielding and take a maximum of 12 months to mature, unlike traditional suckers that take up to two years.

The tissue culture banana varieties planted include Fhia 17,Grand 9,William High breed and Giant Kavendish.

Mwangoma attributed the increased production to provision of free tissue culture banana seedling to farmers.

“We are now revising our target to 6,000 hectares after meeting our previous one. We are fully committed to supporting our farmers ,”  Mwangoma said.

KCDMS Chief of Party Prof Robert Mwadime hailed the symbiotic partnership between farmers, private partners and the government.

“We are helping farmers through business development services and governance training, market linkages, and provision of equipment for value addition to their commodities,” Mwadime said.

The project, dubbed Feed the Future, is funded by the US government through its global hunger and food security initiative to reduce poverty and enhance nutrition, social inclusion and resilience.

(Edited by Tabnacha O)