Like in Pakistan, let’s raise stakes in key markets

Ortum in West Pokot produces about 2,000 tonnes of onion annually making it one of the onion powerhouses in Kenya. This puts its potential at par with Pakistan, another onion producing conflict-prone region.

Pakistan is among the top five onion producers in the world. Last year, Pakistan produced a record onion yield that resulted in an onion export worth at least Sh22.1 billion.

This onion revenue was almost twice the Sh14.9 billion set aside in last year’s budget towards rural electrification. The fact that Pakistan’s 2015 onion revenue can fund nearly two years of Kenya’s rural electrification programme further vindicates the utter potential of agriculture in enhancing livelihoods and powering a country’s economy.

It is, however, critical for the farmers of Ortum in West Pokot to similarly sell their onions on the global market. Currently, what mostly happens is that middlemen descend into their farms to buy onions at throwaway prices. Consequently, the farmers mostly farm to survive, not to prosper. This model of farming and selling farm produce is simply unsustainable and must be changed.

West Pokot together with other agriculturally rich counties need to embrace Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD). Currently our farmers are mostly left to their own farming devices and challenges.

SARD seeks to increase food production in a sustainable way and enhance food security. According to a UNEP report, this involves education initiatives, utilisation of economic incentives and the development of appropriate and new technologies. If West Pokot farmers and County Government embraced this three-pronged approach, the County and Country at large would experience stable supplies of nutritionally adequate food, access to those supplies by vulnerable groups, and production for markets.

This latter aspect is the dividing line between onion farming that leads to prosperity and that leading to bare survival. It’s about farm produce accessing reliable and competitive markets. The litmus test lies in the answer to this question – do farmers in West Pokot know a foreign market where they can sell their onions and what it would take to export the onions? Such knowledge should be available to the farmers as it would minimise a reliance on local and foreign middlemen.

Accessibility to foreign markets is preceded by knowledge of these foreign markets. In this regard, such knowledge is just as important as the manure, water, land and labour without which there can be no farm produce. But because knowledge of these relevant global markets and means of utilising it is often treated as an exclusive domain for a chosen few, farmers often end up surviving and not prospering despite their diligence and ensuing bumper harvests. If Pakistan’s farmers can earn at least Sh22.1 billion from their onions, then surely onion farmers in West Pokot and across Kenya should claim their stake in the lucrative global market.

Think green, act green!

Related Topics

Pakistan