1. Spinoffs session:
the case of Hillside Green, Kenya
Eunice K. Mwongera (BA Hons, MBA)
CEO & Founder
Hillside Green

2. seasofchange.net

3. seasofchange.net

4. The case of horticulture farming
and small scale farmers
1. Horticulture is labour incentive- use of cheap rural labour
2. Smallness of plots ideal for vegetable production
3. Business sense - it makes business sense for the exporter
4. Agribusiness rural Africa- by its very nature the rural area is
agribusiness hence it’s not a new concept, it is not difficult
to introduce technology- most hort. in Kenya have
embraced EU introduced global gap certification standards
4 seasofchange.net

5. Key success factors
 Improved rural lifestyle
 Access to markets for the rural products
 Available readily disposable revenues to farmers
 Crop rotation
 Alternative source of income as opposed to traditional farming
 Mainstreaming the rural farming community to the country’s economy, i.e
foreign earning
 Addressing food insecurity, poverty in rural areas.
 technology transfer, skills and knowledge to farmers
 introduction of contract farming as a structure (prices, consistency, volumes,
quality)
5 seasofchange.net

6. Challenges
 farmers can be very disjointed
 poverty levels interfere with farming strategy
 side selling of produce to brokers – dishonouring of the contracts
 compromising on quality and agreed standards
 unaffordable requirements e.g. pesticides way out of reach of farmers
 rudimental way of farming- not professionalised (no records, sales, lots of
goodwill with products, farming as a hobby)
 water challenges- most of agriculture is rain fed and rain is unreliable
 high cost of production challenges the small holder
 competition from products produced in Guatemala, Morocco and Egypt where
governments have provided incentives making it cheaper for their farmers
6 seasofchange.net

7. Mechanisms for scaling up
 Need for intensified private sector/government partnership to provide extension
services and training to farmers
 Agriculture based projects/programmes that target each challenge e.g. COLEACP/PIP
in Africa targets standards certification in the food value chain and has succeeded in
reaching the rural farmer
 Aiding the exporter/ private sector by agribusiness ngos, funders, organisations in
areas that challenging such:
 Right technology
 Irrigation to mitigate rain fed challenges
 Pesticide management
 Post harvest challenges/losses (improved transportation and storage faculties)
 Marketing structures (address and develop organised market system even to local
market e.g. the closed street shop selling concept used in western where a street is
closed for a particular market day)
7 seasofchange.net

8. Suggested methods’ of involving
smallholder farmers
 Create partnership/farmers groups/Sacco’s/for ease of
governance – ensure farmers are empowered
 Farmers contract farming
 Introduce technology that meets farmers needs (post
harvest cooling facility)
 Short term credit facility to support farm inputs
8 seasofchange.net

9. How can we help farmers to adapt
to the pull culture of supermarket?
 Organised market structures
 Training on post harvest handling
 Provision of refer transport to keep crop moisture
 Provision of cooler facility in rural areas
 Educate farmers on commercial value of farming through IT
resource centre based in their area of operation (where they are
trained on record keeping, simple book keeping methods,
quality, and basic IT) use of Solar in the remotest area has been
seen to open
9 seasofchange.net