Business Daily (Nairobi)
James Karuga
17 May 2011
Rising prices and demand as Kenya’s cotton ginneries are rehabilitated has seen a wave of farmers revert to farming the crop they abandoned in the early 1990s due to poor prices and regulation.
In the larger Makueni in Eastern region, more than 80 per cent of farmers now grow the crop, and in Rift Valley farmer numbers have nearly tripled from the 1,200 growers recorded in 2009.
The renewed interest from farmers has been spurred by the incentives that cotton stakeholders are offering.
The government is now giving farmers free seed and some of the ginneries are employing extension officers to train farmers in good farm management practices.
“We have employed 30 extension officers,” said Devan Khagram of Salawa Ginnery.
In the Rift Valley, Salawa Ginnery is also helping farmers with farm inputs like pesticides, spray pump credit and ploughing services, which sees farmers pay back interest free loans after harvest.
The crop has one annual planting season, but the appeal of this support has seen Salawa register 3,500 cotton farmers, up from 1,200 in 2009.
Under the supervision of the Cotton Development Board, farmers are now selling a kilogramme of cotton at Sh65, a price set by the board.
This compares with Sh15 a kilogramme or less for Rift Valley farmers in the1990s.
Last year, cotton farmers were paid Sh32 a kilogramme, and the previous year Sh30.
Most of the farmers in Kerio Valley are farming cotton in one-acre pieces of land, which if the right agronomic practices are applied can yield 800kg an acre.
But, according to Devan, the most Kerio farmers get per acre is 300kg.
This has meant that even with 3,500 farmers in Kerio, the Salawa Ginnery is proving unable to source sufficient cotton for its capacity and demand.
The ginnery can process 5 million kilogrammes of raw materials in six months, but the farmers at Kerio are currently supplying only a fifth of that capacity.
This has seen Salawa set a target to recruit 6,000 more farmers in other regions of the Rift Valley, including Naivasha and Western Province.
At current prices, and with a yield of 300kg an acre, farmers are earning nearly Sh20,000, offset against which are costs of around Sh5000, including the cost of 6kg an acre.
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