A Closer Look At The Current State of the Potato Industry in Kenya

Agriculture directly contributes 25 percent to GDP and 65 percent of export earnings. Growth and development in the agricultural sector are crucial for Kenya’s overall economic and social development.

In Kenya, root and tuber crops are important food crops that have gained increased importance in the recent past due to their role in food security, short maturity period that allows it to escape drought as well as their potential for commercial processing.

Among the tuber crops, indeed, the potato is emerging as one of the promising enterprises that will play a great role towards the realization of the objectives of Kenya Vision 2030 under the economic pillar because of its substantial contribution to food availability.

Potato is one of the food crops under the root and tuber family. This crop is very crucial towards contributing to the growth of the economy of Kenya, therefore requires attention both in terms of resources and long-term planning. There there are numerous challenges facing the potato sub-sector including inadequate research and development, inadequate quality seed and planting materials, low productivity, weak research-extension-farmer linkages, low level of value addition and poor market infrastructure.

The industry, directly and indirectly, employs about 3.3 million people as producers, market agents, transporters, processors, vendors, retailers, and exporters. There were approximately 800,000 growers in the country by 2015. It is grown twice annually i.e. during the long and short rains.

Inadequate financing and credit services to potato farmers and as well as poor enforcement of produce and product standards are among the challenges that the potato industry in Kenya has and is still facing, therefore, leading to poor performance in the sector.

According to a report from the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS), Irish potato has a high potential for addressing food insecurity, unemployment and low farm incomes in Kenya due to its high productivity per unit area and its versatility in utilization. Potato is said to be the second most important food crop in the country after maize.

About 1.5 million tons of potatoes worth 40 to 50 billion shillings used to be produced each year, generating the source of livelihood for millions of Kenyans. This is no longer the case at the moment as this sector is performing very badly due to the challenged being faced by farmers yet no one is bothered to address them.

Potatoes require new seeds every planting season since when the ones harvested are again used as spuds, the yields will definitely go down. Farmers are not able to access news potato seeds and therefore being forced to find alternative ways of planting the crop in every season using the traditional methods of farming.

In this era, technology has taken over the world and the agricultural sector has greatly transformed. Despite this being the case, potato farmers in Kenya are not aware of most of the things that come along with technology since they have not been enlightened on the matter.

KEPHIS is mandated to deal with among other things, approve new seeds in the market after passing them through a number of tests. Funny enough, KEPHIS has not had a CEO in years, meaning that no new seed is getting approved since there is no one to do it. This forces farmers to keep on recycling older and older seeds as they wait for the newly discovered seeds to be approved by the government before they can be able to use them. Yields per acre have declined from 15T to 3T. Potato yields are generally low with an average yield of approximately 10 tons per hectare due to limited use of high-quality seed.

With low production rates of potatoes in the country, the effect has been that about 50 percent joints which were depended on by the common man for take-away-chips have been closed down. The potatoes available in the market. Business has gone down and this leads to a slow growth of the economy.

Potatoes prices have gone up to the extent that one is being sold at a market price of 10 shillings, something that has never happened. Potatoes have now gone to being sold at the same prices as tomatoes, yet they have always been known to have the best and favorable prices across the country, despite the season.

The potato issue is very critical to Kenya as a country and needs to be addressed as urgently as possible before things totally fall out of hands. The concerned bodies need to come together and ensure that Kenyans have been relieved the burden of high market prices on potatoes since they are among the staple meals for most Kenyan households.