Close to 40 per cent of fruits grown in Ukambani go to waste during the peak seasons due to lack of a ready market.
Mangoes, paws paws and bananas do well in the region but their storage has proved a challenge to many farmers who grow them in large scale, leading to wastage.
However, a group of 25 women in Muthetheni location, Machakos County, have embraced a simple method of drying fruits and vegetables using solar energy.
Utithini Women Orphan Child Care Group are using the solar drier to deal with this challenge.
Chairlady Teresa Mwendwa said this is a simple technology utilising a greenhouse-like polythene paper and some metallic drying tables.
She said the drier, which is a donation from Usaid, uses solar waves to dry the fruits which can be stored for a longer time.
“We process the fruits and vegetables and package them for sale as a way of adding value. The fruits are chopped into thin sizes and kept in the drier early in the morning to dry throughout the day,” Mwendwa said.
She said that apart from helping in managing the wastage of fruits during peak seasons, they also sell the packaged fruits and get good money.
Mwendwa said they started the self help group back in 2001 with the aim of supporting children who had been orphaned by HIV/Aids.
“Many vulnerable children were not going to school then because the Free Primary Education had not been introduced so we thought of coming together to support them,” she said.
Mwendwa said the venture has since enabled the orphans to continue with their education with two completing university education since the programme began.
She said each member grows vegetables in their farms and takes the produce to the processing plant. “We visit the homesteads and ensure that members are growing the vegetables as agreed. If we say we need 20kg of vegetables from each member that is what we collect. The group also buys from local farmers as a way of encouraging local farming of the fruits,” said Mwendwa.
She said that through the help of Usaid, they have been able to sell a kilogramme of dried mangoes at Sh1,000 and pawpaw at Sh650.
Besides fruits, they also use the drier to dehumidify vegetables like Kales, Kunde and Amaranth, with the latter being milled into flour which is used to make porridge, chapatti and mandazi. “When we began, we used to sell a kilo of Amaranth flour at Sh150 but now the price has dropped to Sh85 due to competition from other farmers but this price is still good,” Mwendwa said.
At the beginning, the group faced many challenges including lack of knowledge on how to use the solar drier.
“Sometimes we would put the fruits and vegetables on the drier in the evening and leave the products to dry overnight something that would compromise the quality of the final product which would go bad after a few days,” Mwendwa said.
However, with some training from Usaid, the group has since learnt to put their product to dry in the morning when there is little or no cloud cover for better results.
Mwendwa said the US agency has also bought a flour mill for the group to use in milling the Amaranth flour.
