Tissue culture banana places a tiny village on Kenya’s farming map

By Duncan MBOYAH

Kiambu district in central Kenya is mainly an agricultural district that is home to cash crops like coffee and tea that are grown in the lower zones, while elsewhere in the district, other farmers practice floriculture and dairy farming on a large scale
But for Chura, a small village in Kiambu, there are no cash crops and most farming households depend on subsistent crop farming for home consumption and meager income generation.
Farmers living within this area supply the nearby Nairobi city with horticultural produce, as it is only 35 kilometers away. Some of the horticultural crops include kale (sukuma wiki), spinach, green pepper (pili hoho), tomatoes, lettuce, coriander (dania), potatoes, cucumber, cauliflower, celery, broccoli, corgett and eggplant.
Other crops for home consumption grown in this area include maize, beans, sweet potatoes and potatoes.
As a result of the public-private partnership between an International Non governmental Organization Africa Harvest International and Dupont, farmers in the area have now resorted to planting tissue culture banana in large scale.
This partnership has set up a model that can be emulated and transferred to many regions as it forms part of the modern day development, where the different organizations contribute towards the eradication of hunger and poverty reduction.
In this partnership, DuPont had donated the funds while Africa Harvest has provided expertise in capacity and knowledge transfer to grassroots communities so that they can benefit from tissue culture banana technology.
“Over 2,500 farmers in Chura Community have adopted the TC banana in the first year and part of second year”, reveals Dr. Florence Wambugu, Africa Harvest Chief Executive officer.
Wambugu says that the varieties adopted range from the Grande naine, Giant Cavendish and William.
She notes that the project had met their expectations of technology introduction with a 15% initial penetration in the 1st year, translating to the 1,000 households.
In addition, a farmer owned marketing company has already been formed and a warehouse is now in place for immediate storage by farmers.
The NGO targets to introduce 6,000 households by end of 2006, and even bigger number gauging from the clamuor the TC banana is getting from farmers, especially with the establishment of TCBEL marketing company.
Before going to Chura, Africa Harvest had been working in other parts of Central Province of Kenya helping resource poor farmers with ideas towards alleviating poverty through the TC banana technology through a Rockefeller Foundation funded project.
Africa Harvest in conjunction with farmers from the area analyzed the production costs of their current crops including time spend, inputs and energy, and compared this to the input and output from the banana.
After the analysis, farmers themselves realized that the returns from the TC banana were better than their crops plus other social benefits of belonging to a functional group that came with TC banana.
“We then took the farmers for a farmer to farmer exchange visit program to Maragua and Murang’a districts where TC banana has been grown for several years and has improved lives of resource poor farmers’, says Wambugu.
She adds that the two strategies drew the first 1000 farmer household to the project in 2004.
Confirming success in other areas, Wambugu points out that over the last 7 years, TC banana biotechnology has benefited 500,000 Small Scale banana producers in Kenya.
To jumpstart banana crop as an industry, the government must look at all bottlenecks and adopt a holistic approach to build its credibility.
It must be willing to subsidize small-scale farmers from the beginning by offering seeds at reduced costs.
To have a banana agro-based industry, Wambugu says that stakeholders must aggressively engage policy makers in Kenya.
They can learn from Uganda, which is the regional leader in banana industry. Indeed, she says, if the three East African countries combined effort, they could together tap into the regional and international market like the Middle East, European countries and China where banana is in high demand.
She says that the proceeds from horticulture is only 20% as the middlemen set abnormally low prices and will usually pay farmers only after deducting their own expenses and paying themselves.
Chura is therefore benefiting from introduction of a proven technology and can be described as a scaling up despite technology introduction challenges.
These homegrown solutions for hunger, malnutrition and poverty alleviation will definitely improve farmers’ living standard and establish sustainable livelihood.
According to legislator Paul Muite, who is also the area member of parliament the organizations have involved the community to an extent that the community feels real owners of the project.
“ The project approach is commendable as it is a departure from the top-bottom approach of development practiced by most donors yet has little to show on the ground despite utilizing lots of money”, he says.
He suggested that any meaningful poverty eradication programme should emulate this approach since it has identified the farmers’ priorities.
“The project is also impressive since it has targeted small-scale farmers with
as little as 0.5 acres and yet they can derive a comfortable income to take children to school,” adds MP.
Stakeholders in the TC banana ‘industry’ say that it is time the government set policies to regulate banana as an industry in Kenya.
According to the Director Business Development & Finance at Africa Harvest Mr. Michael Njuguna a coherent government policy is the only way to rejuvenate and bring order to banana farming.
Njuguna contends that the government has paid much attention on export cash crops such as coffee and tea at the expense of food crops like the banana, which it has never recognized as a commodity on its own rights.
Food crops, such as the banana, could feed the rural communities generate sustainable income as well as being nurtured for export.
The Director of Top Notch, a banana marketing company Mr. Ben Kageche insists that an as a matter of urgency, a banana board and banana associations that can govern banana as an industry has to be set up.
He says that such intervention will rank it with other cash crops and enable its farmer’s start receiving incentive from the government
The formation should include stakeholders like Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services (KEPHIS) - for regulating TC banana seedling production and laboratories, farmer associations, traders, nursery owners and Horticultural Development Authority (HCDA) who in collaboration would set up standards for the industry.
However, for the prospects to be explored, all stakeholders must also perceive the banana as a potential commodity.
Farmers have used the crop for home consumption and ceremony for many years but unfortunately only a little opportunistic selling has gone on through middlemen in many Kenyan regions.
As a result, national banana marketing systems in Kenya have been non-existent; therefore, the crop has not realized its full potential both in the internal and external markets.
Njuguna suggests that the government needs to fix a disease indexing facility, either in conjunction with other East African countries to increase parietal exchange while keeping off diseases.
He notes that South Africa is the closest country with the indexing facility where TC banana seedlings are imported from to support the whole value chain.
“Regulate and monitor the TC banana seedling production nursery practices so that correct procedure are followed for high quality plantlets”, he adds.
He further suggested that private sector nurseries where farmers buy seedlings should also be brought closer to the farming community but regulated for quality assurance under KEPHIS.
Some of the bottlenecks affecting farmers in other parts of the country are Somaclonal variations or “bogus” TC seedlings since they purchase seedlings from unrecognized nurseries and have to uproot almost 40% of the bananas that cannot flower one year later.
Furthermore, extension, training and marketing should be regulated. The regulating body could adopt the value chain approach where the need is first created then farmer capacity build to meet that need and link farmers to the market.
In South Africa for example, the government designates different geographical areas to different food crop and provides storage.
Njuguna draws parallel to the ‘Banana countries’ like Costa Rica and Caribbean Islands where the banana is a big time industry with huge companies such as PANA springing up to support the industry.
A team of Kenyan scientists was recently amazed at the mechanization and delicate post harvest handling in the banana industry during a visit to PANA.
“When ready, the bananas are covered with yellow polythene bags and put in a conveyer to avoid bruises. They are then cleaned, packed in cartons and put in a cold room at regulated temperature waiting to be exported, ” says Njuguna.
He admits that Kenya has a long way to go, but through the government interest, and partnership with other stakeholders, the TC banana has potential for big business in Kenya and Eastern Africa in general.
Banana is the most available fruit, in - season and out of – season as it is sold in the local kiosks, shops and hawked on the streets at a constant price of 5 ksh per finger.
A recent research indicates that banana consumption is higher in the up market areas than in the low-income areas in Nairobi, which is the obvious market.
This is attributed to the growing appreciation of traditional unprocessed foods amongst the people.
Through the cooperation with Africa Harvest, deliberate promotion of the banana as a healthy food could orient others to balance the more expensive fruits and food with the banana and increase demand.