Farmers are increasingly seeking to engage in avocado farming due to ready market and this has led to a high demand for clean and quality seedlings.
To bridge this gap, a small medium enterprise (SME) in Trans Nzoia county has grabbed this opportunity and is raising clean and quality avocado seedlings.
Damaris Omuka, farm manager at KTL Farm Limited in Kitalale in Kitale, Trans Nzoia county, said their aim is to ensure farmers get quality seedlings. KTL is an acronym which in Maori language in New Zealand means pooling together in one direction.
Besides supplying quality certified seedlings to farmers, they also train farmers in orchard management and fruit production.
Omuka, who graduated from Chuka University with a degree in agriculture, said the SME was started in 2019 and deals with the avocado value chain.
She said planting quality certified seedlings is important for farmers who want to reap maximum benefits from avocado production.
“The most important thing is to plant clean avocado seedlings. Farmers want the assurance that the seedlings are clean and of quality,” she said.
To ensure this, Omuka said they sterilise the soil or medium that they use to pot the seedlings. This is owing to the Kenya Crops and Dairy Market Systems Activity (KCDMS), funded through USAID's Feed the Future initiative.
She said KCDMS supported them with an estimated Sh30 million which they used to upgrade the nursery and training farmers on avocado production and orchard management.
“Before KCDMS came onboard, we spent a lot of money on soil testing before potting, and even after we have done grafting. This was being done to ensure we give farmers clean material,” Omuka said.
She said they were targeting to recruit 2,000 farmers in Bungoma (which is one of the project’s targeted counties) and supply them with 30,000 seedlings.
But with support from the project, they have been able to supply 45,000 seedlings to 2,750 farmers in Bungoma.
To ensure the seedlings are clean, Omuka said they sterilise the soil to prevent any soil borne diseases.
“We sterilise the medium so that we can remove any disease or contamination in the soil. This is to prevent harming the plant once transplanted to the orchard. We were able to buy a sterilisation chamber thanks to support from KCDMS to help guarantee the farmers quality seedlings,” she said.
Currently, they have 75,000 avocado seedlings and they are targeting to sell to farmers in the next season. She said prices will be determined by the cost of production but prices range at Sh200 per seedling.
“After supplying farmers with seedlings, we also do follow up visits to see how they are managing the avocado trees and to offer support in case they are facing any challenges. We put them into groups for traceability based on villages and the wards.
She said access to quality seeds that are true to type and disease free is one of the major challenges that farmers face in avocado farming.
“You can buy seedlings at a cheaper price but after three years, you realise that the avocado you planted is not true to type. This means you will not be able to harvest anything after three years,” she said.
Omuka noted that there is a high demand for avocado so the company is doing the whole value chain from training the farmers, to offering extension service to market linkage.
“We also buy the fruits from the farmers. Once a farmer comes to pick seedlings, we register them for traceability and offer any support needed to manage their avocado farms,” she said.
She advised farmers to ensure they source their seedlings from certified nurseries. This will determine your end product is good and that you can make profit from this.