By Caroline Mwendwa
Located about 5 km from Busia town in a market called Alepo, Tanga Kona Commercial Village is the symbol of the future imagined and created by the cassava farmers residents of Busia, Western Kenya.
It carries their story right from when all they knew were indigenous varieties of cassava that their great grandparents depended on for food, to date, when science and technology has transformed their lives through improved cassava varieties and economic empowerment through creation of markets for their farm produce.
The birth of Tanga Kona Village
In the year 1999, cassava farmers in Busia, and indeed all over Kenya bore the blunt of the deadly Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD). This disease hit cassava farms leaving farmers impoverished and ravaging in hunger. There was nothing to harvest, and farmers had nothing to turn to in feeding their families. As they say, tough times call for tough solutions. A farmer group, by the name Agro-Farmers Self Help Group felt the need to look for solutions from scientists at KALRO. KALRO, through research brought to farmers improved varieties, among them; MH95/ 183; MM96/2840; MM96/2270; MM98/0293; Migyera; MM96/5280; MM4776, among others. Of these, MH95/183, was selected to be the most suitable for the region. Under proper agronomical practice, this variety can yield up to 20, 000Kg of cassava per acre. These new varieties have the following advantages: they are high yielding, early maturing, have low cyanide levels and good underground storability, high dry matter content and are sweet to taste.
When the new varieties were introduced to farmers, they multiplied seeds and spread them widely to other farmers to plant. As a result of the high yielding nature of these varieties, there was so much to harvest, to a point of glut. Farmers had nowhere to sell their farm produce, which had more than doubled after the introduction of the improved varieties. Agro Farmers Self Help Group, a youth group then, had to go back to the drawing board, this time not pushed by hunger and poverty, but by glut. They had to create a market for cassava. That is how cassava processing cooperative came to be in 2010. They called it The Tanga Kona Commercial Village. To legalise it, it was first registered as a CBO, and in 2014, it was registered as a cooperative.
“We began with 56 registered members, and currently the cooperative has grown to 406 registered members,” says Mr Maurice Olaba, the secretary at the cooperative. The cooperative does not only buy cassava from its members, but nonmembers as well. It is currently working with 3,000 farmers, but members enjoy benefits that non-members do not. For instance, markets for seeds are availed to members as priority.
Activities of the cooperative
The cooperative buys fresh tubers from farmers at Ksh5 per Kg, to process it into various products including flour and crisps. “We are trained by KALRO on these processes and all our products are certified by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS),” says Mr Olaba. The cooperative has 15 employees but increases the number of casual staff depending on need.
The cooperative has been instrumental in spinning economic development of residents in the area as farmers are now confident to produce cassava in large scale. “Our farmers are now thinking commercially, and we have farmers growing even up to ten acres of cassava,” says Mr Olaba. Through the cooperative, farmers have learnt that there are many ways of preparing cassava, not just by boiling. Families are now using the flour to make ugali and chapati. Chopped cassava is also used to make crisps, when deep fried and a nutritious meal for breakfast when boiled.
Markets for cassava products
Cassava being an indigenous food crop, which does not require synthetic fertilizers in planting and has low gluten levels with a myriad nutritional benefit, has become the preferred substitute for people with conditions such as gluten intolerance. “We are always getting orders for cassava flour from various organizations, for example, we are currently preparing flour, to supply to two clients who have placed monthly orders. One requires 10,000Kg every month, and another 2,000Kg to 6,000Kg every month,’ says Mr Olaba explaining that 2Kg of fresh tubers, when milled produces 1Kg of flour. He goes on to talk about the expanding markets saying that the cooperative recently received an order from an American based organization, to supply 25,000Kg of cassava flour weekly, and the cassava used to make this flour must be obtained from organically certified farmers. This reveals the need for farmers to earn skills in organic farming, and the cooperative management has taken this up, in conjunction with Biovision Africa Trust.
With growing markets, the cooperative is optimistic that farmers will keep growing cassava at large scale, for the cooperative to meet the demand.
Challenges
The enterprise is however not without its challenges. A major challenge as Mr Olaba points out, is that due to the bulky nature of cassava, transport from homes to the cooperative poses a huge challenge, for farmers. “Most farmers are grappling with poverty, and transport for cassava can be costly. To provide a solution, we have established six collection centers near our farmers where they take the fresh cassava for processing into flour. The flour is then brought to the cooperative,” elaborates Mr Olaba.
Another challenge is that farmers are afraid of joining the cooperative, for the fear that it might fail, and this limits its capital base. To encourage nonmembers to register as members, the society offers incentives to members such as giving them seeds.
Aspirations
Already, Tanga Kona is set for growth and as Mr Olaba avers, plans are underway to build it into a company that has branches in various locations, each branch concerned with processing a specific product.
To conclude in Mr Olaba’s words, “cassava is the way to go, it’s a driver of change, it fights poverty and creates wealth.”