On a warm Saturday morning at Thiba village in Embu county, Fridah Karimi tends to tree seedlings at her nursery completely unaware that the world was celebrating women like her.
The world marked the International Day of Rural Women (IDRW) under the theme ‘Rural Women Rise and Claim your Basic Right to Sustainable Development’.
But Karimi went on with her work oblivious that women like her were being feted.
She was busy doing what she does best - tend to fruit seedlings.
The short rains are expected to start soon and she is optimistic that she will make huge sales owing to high demand.
She has a blend of fruit seedlings including mangoes, avocado, macadamia and wood trees all of which she says are often on high demand during the rainy season.
Karimi's favourite is mango seedlings since they are fast-moving and she is passionate about what she does after recently acquiring new skills in a training with Market Access Upgrade Program (MARKUP) Kenya.
The European Union-supported program aims at promoting competitiveness and market access for selected produce locally, regionally and internationally.
Karimi said she was trained on the importance of using clean farm equipment and other issues on the mango’s value chain.
She says together with other farmers in Embu and surrounding counties, they were also trained on safe use of pesticides and safe planting methods.
"I learnt about grafting as a key activity in ensuring quality seedlings,” Karimi said, adding that they also learnt how to sterilise farming tools to avoid infecting seedlings particularly during grafting.
Following the training, farmers in the county have high hope of finding new markets for their produce locally and in Europe.
This is after the Global Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) also enlightened them on quality production.
"After farmers were trained and exposed to possible markets locally and internationally, there has been high demand for mango seedlings and I'm leveraging on this to make more sales," Karimi said.
