Mobile fertiliser application may make Kenya food secure

NAIROBI, KENYA: The failure by farmers to apply fertilisers during planting and topdressing has been one of the key contributors to the shaky food situation in not only Kenya but across Africa.

Yet, the key to tackling hunger in Kenya is enriching its soil. However, the perennial debate has been how to do it. There is no doubt that fertilisers make such a profound difference in this country because the red soil is deficient in organic matter and in key nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. 

By farming intensively without replenishing soil nutrients, farmers across Kenya and other parts of the continent have lost an average of 22 kilogrammes of nitrogen, 2.5 kilogrammes of phosphorus, and 15 kilogrammes of potassium per hectare annually over the past three decades. As a result of this, farm yields are pitiful.

There is a reason for us as a country to worry that Kenya’s soil problems could be heading towards a crisis. Producing more food for a growing population in the coming years, while at the same time combating poverty and hunger is a huge challenge facing Kenya’s agriculture.

As a result of the depletion of the soil, average yields of grain crops have stagnated at around one tonne per hectare since the 1960s. 

By contrast, yields now reach 2.5 tonnes per hectare in South Asia and 4.5 tonnes an hectare in East Asia.

The chief reason behind this difference has been the intensified and wide adoption of chemical fertilisers since the green revolution.

Across Africa, the use of fertiliser has remained at around nine kilogrammes per hectare of cultivated land over the past 40 years, whereas Asia uses 96 kilogrammes per hectare of inorganic fertiliser.

So, why is Kenya, and Africa, still lagging behind in terms of adopting and intensifying fertiliser use in their fields even as hunger continues to bite? Cost is one of the biggest problems.

Because of transport expenses, farmers in inland Kenya pay more than twice as much for fertiliser as farmers in Europe. But it is the unreliable supply because of poor distribution systems that continue to play a major role in this sad state of affairs.

As a matter of fact, the World Bank and other major international donors helped to fund fertiliser use in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the 1970s and 80s. However, the subsidies came as a drag on the private-sector development. They eventually cut them off.

 

With a window wide open for the private sector to augment what African governments are doing to support agriculture in the continent, a number of players have come on board in their bid to up Africa’s food production through increased fertiliser use. Export Trading Group (ETG), a multinational dealing in farm inputs and agriculture commodities in one such firm that continues to play this prime role. 

With the full appreciation of the critical importance of right fertiliser use in food production, ETG recently launched a new mobile fertiliser application that allows farmers to place orders of the input even from the remotest places in the country.

Known as the ETG Mobile App, the new innovation was developed in 2017, with the principal aim of boosting access of the input to farmers. If farmers in Kenya can access this critical ingredient, then its application to their farms during planting and top-dressing would increase, ultimately making Kenya produce more food.

Through the fertiliser mobile app, farmers can tell which brands of fertilisers are available in the market and at what price. Importantly, using their mobile phones, farmers can also locate the nearest point where they can purchase the input from. With this new app, a farmer can order, pay and even request  for delivery to his farm.

So far, Trans-Nzoia, Bungoma, Uasin Gishu, Kiambu, Nyeri, Murang'a, Nakuru, Kericho, Bomet, Kakamega and Migori counties lead in the uptake of the mobile app. Regions such as Nyanza, Coast and Eastern have also not been left behind. But not all farmers have managed to use the app as most small-scale farmers in Kenya do not have smart phones. As an organisation, we are addressing this gap by encouraging farmers who have no smart phones to place their fertiliser orders through the distributors who are spread across the country. Hopefully, in a year or so, we would have come up with a long-term solution to this.

With a successful uptake of the app in Kenya, our focus will now shift to Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo before expanding it to other countries in Africa. Our strategic goal is to make Africa a food-secure continent, and hopefully, export the surplus to Asia where there is a population boom. 

Mr Lewis is the Country Head of Export Trading Group, a Kenyan multinational dealing with farm inputs and commodities. Email: [email protected]