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It’s hard to find another international institution that the College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) at The Ohio State University (OSU) has been collaborating with longer than Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in India.

The relationship between the two universities, which dates back to the 1950’s when OSU worked with USAID and the Ford Foundation to build land-grant institutions of higher agricultural education in northern India, has taken on a new role as OSU, through the Office of International Programs in Agriculture (IPA), transitions its relationship with PAU to collaboratively provide agricultural development inputs to Egerton University Faculty of Agriculture in Kenya.

In 2012 CFAES faculty and administrators from OSU, along with colleagues at PAU, initiated a project managed by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service focused on providing technical assistance to Egerton University in Njoro, Kenya, with the intent to strengthen the institution’s capacity to improve food security in the East African nation of 44 million people.

The project officially became known as the Trilateral Partnership for Food Security because of the collective inputs from OSU, PAU, and Egerton, and is advancing towards meeting a number of objectives identified at the program’s inception through collaborative strategic planning.

One of these overall objectives was to create a strategic plan for Egerton to promote outreach to stakeholders in the agribusiness sector and train its graduate students on the importance of developing private sector linkages.

Last month the first training workshop was held at Egerton designed to instruct students and community agribusiness leaders how to develop effective business plans for small and medium enterprise (SME’s) in Nakuru County. Led by Mark Erbaugh, Director of IPA, and David Hahn, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Agricultural and Development Economics, the program facilitated nearly 50 participants – 33 Egerton graduate students and 15 business leaders in Nakuru County – to work in small groups developing a business plan from a provided template.

“Understanding competition is one of the most important ingredients for writing an effective business plan,” explained Dr. Sandeep Kapur, Director of the School of Business studies at Punjab Agricultural University, who spoke addressed participants via video-conferencing on the key elements of competitive analysis.

Especially valuable to the participants was the use of a local business, ABC Feeds, as a case study for devising their own business plans. ABC Super Feeds, LTD, a livestock feed supplier that employs 17 local Kenyans and currently serves 38 of Kenya’s 47 counties, worked with instructors prior to the workshop to provide them with information related to market size, production costs, advertising strategies, and personnel requirements for their enterprise, which was then given to workshop participants as a reference for building their own business plan. Dr. Patience Mshenga, Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Management at Egerton University, led the discussion on business plan development using the ABC Feeds as a case study to illustrate various components of a business plan.

Not only is the workshop expected to instill in prospective entrepreneurs practical skills pertaining to business management, but the final completed business plans and the certificate of completion presented to participants at the end of the workshop will serve as documentation for those interested in securing a loan to finance a new business.

“Farmers and other small businesses in Kenya have great difficulty obtaining finances to grow and expand,” explains Dr. Hahn. “Our training prepared the students to help develop business plans for sound decision-making and to secure bank loans”.

Such outreach is pivotal considering that upwards of 75% of Kenyans are involved in small-holder agriculture, and facilitating connections between students and private sector organizations in the areas of agriculture will go a long way in providing greater employment opportunities for Kenyan youth living in a country where private sector agribusiness is expected to expand and play a vital role in improving agricultural production.

“CFAES has a long history of working with Colleges of Agriculture in different countries to improve their linkages with the private sector agribusiness,” says Dr. Erbaugh, explaining further that public sector employment opportunities for new college graduates is stagnant and the way forward for these institutions is to provide training that equips students to work in or with the private sector.

“Providing outreach to private sector agribusinesses is a tremendous way for these universities to remain relevant and assist in transforming simple agricultural systems into more dynamic commercial systems.”

The three institutions have no plans of slowing down their programming, as instructors have already begun brainstorming on how future workshops can be organized and enhanced. Potential options include offering the same curriculum to a new cohort of students and business-owners, offering advanced workshops with an emphasis on financial management, and/or having students meet regularly with their workshop business partners to modify and update business plans after their first iteration of the workshop.

Susan Waage the project manager at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) together with Virginia Wolf, the deputy division director at USDA, conducted monitoring of the Trilateral Partnership for Food Security Program at Egerton University. This activity was carried out in the company of Prof. A.K Kahi, the Program coordinator.

They paid a visit to the Dairy Goats Improvement Centre, a centre specifically set for the dairy goats under the Trilateral Partnership for Food Security.

With the dairy goats having only been introduced for a period of two months in the program, it was such a good impression how they were doing perfectly fine, producing good litres of milk per milking in spite the fact that they had been imported from South Africa which is quite a different tropic zone compared to Kenya.

The dairy goats will be taken to agricultural shows within the country as well as international trade fairs as a mode of creating awareness to the farmers, with regards to which species of goats do well for dairy purposes.

Thereafter they visited the apiary, where langstroth bee hives have been installed with the main focus being, large-scale production of honey. This facility/ unit will also tend to act as both a research and learning facility for both the students and farmers. There is currently a lot of potential in beekeeping at the University and its environs. However, there has not been a keen interest by the people, specifically farmers to take it up.

Egerton University is keen to buttress its training in beekeeping by the recently revamped demonstration facility as well as improvement in its infrastructure. The revamp of this demonstration unit will strengthen apicultural research within the university and its environs; it will also promote honey markets and encourage sustainable and strong beekeepers networks.

Preparation and the setup of the mushroom spawn production unit are in progress. This unit will be duly set in readiness for the kickoff of mushroom production in the University. The unit will be one of a kind, since it is intended to produce various species of mushrooms such as the agaricus bisporus and the pleurotus species, only but just to mention a few.

Mushrooms are a high value crop with great potential for income generation, enterprise diversification and can be of great benefit to the alleviation of poverty especially for the rural population. In Kenya, the cultivation of mushroom is still in its infant stage and the growth rate has been very slow. Back in the years, there was little awareness on mushroom production and utilization; the market prices were high and out of reach for most Kenyans.

However, all these have changed now since both the poor and the rich have turned to mushroom cultivation for food security, income generation, nutrition and medicinal factor.

The setup of this production unit at Egerton University will be of great benefit most especially to the farmers within the surrounding areas, since it will provide them with the knowhow of mushroom production, storage and marketing.

This will also create awareness to farmers with regards to which species of mushroom does well in which climatic zone. Students in the University are not left out too; they shall be having a ready and available facility in which they can carry out research.

We were privileged to be visited by the Agriculture Chancellor for Foreign Agricultural Services from the United States.

This is a very rare occasion because, out of the whole country, she had a keen interest of visiting only our project offices to have a look at our activities.

It could be vividly seen from her choice of words that she was deeply engrossed at our activities and the progress that we are making a step at a time.

From this, we cannot forget to say that we are on the right track, making the realization of our goals and objectives not so far from being reached.

She visited the Mushroom Spawn Production Unit, the Apiary and the Dairy Goats Improvement Centre.

She was out of words to know that in as much as we are in the third world countries category, soon the black cloud of food security in our country is going to be a gone case because, we no longer look at reinventing the wheel but rather identifying innovations using the existing technologies.

The fact that we carried home the annual Nairobi Agricultural show goats’ category championship, she is certain that our presence will be felt and impact international Trade fair. She even went to the extent of milking the dairy goats!!

We are certain that our efforts will be sustainable as well as offer inspiration to the future projects and science.

This visit by the Agriculture Chancellor of the United States is just a tip of the iceberg as we are awaiting for another visit from the United States Ambassador to Kenya soon.

Introduction

Bee keeping in Kenya has been practiced since time immemorial. Currently there are two million hives in the country. Most bee keepers in Kenya base their practise on indigenous knowledge which has been passed from one generation to the next.

Areas covered with bees in the country include the mountainous areas, the savannah area, the coastal region and the drier parts of northern Kenya.

Development of Bee Keeping In Kenya

The government of Kenya attempted to introduce modern bee keeping to communities who were already practising the art back in the 1950’s. The government further initiated a training program to train honey and beeswax inspectors, with the resultant establishment of beekeeping demonstration centres in various parts of the country.

Between 1967 and 1969, the government of Kenya received a grant from Ox-Farm through Freedom from Hunger Council of Kenya, to carry out a feasibility study to determine the viability of beekeeping as an income generating activity with specific focus on the drier parts of the country.

In 1971 the government of Kenya obtained assistance from Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to establish a national project on beekeeping. The project spearheaded the establishment of beekeeping co-operatives, honey refineries and equipment workshops especially of Kenya top bar hives. A major milestone was the establishment of the National Beekeeping Station in 1982.

Current Status of Beekeeping in Kenya

The structural adjustment programs of the 1990’s paved way to liberalization of the beekeeping industry which in turn encouraged privatization and commercialization of equipment and services, with both private and public sector partnerships with respect to equipment manufacture and delivery of extension services.

Several individuals operate at various levels of the value chain as producers, processors and marketers.

The Kenyan government has provided an enabling environment for the implementation of beekeeping activities services in collaboration with the private sector, research and training institutions as well as development partners.

The Role of Government in Beekeeping in Kenya

The Kenyan government has continued to support beekeeping by offering subsidized training at the National Beekeeping Station to equip them with the necessary basic skills to run the enterprise.

Field staffs are sponsored for refresher courses at the national beekeeping station and elsewhere.

The government environmental conservation and awareness program incorporate; public lectures, pronounced tree planting days, regular field days and exhibitions to disseminate information on beekeeping.

Of great importance is the annual agricultural shows and trade fairs across the country during which beekeeping information is disseminated and demonstrations done.

Challenges of Beekeeping in Kenya

Some of the challenges facing beekeeping in Kenya were adequately brought forth by the Egerton University Travel Report- Honey Bee/ Mushroom Technological Packages May 25th-June 2nd 2013, to include;

• Poor coordination of apicultural research
• Lack of transparency
• Poor infrastructure
• Inadequate personnel and poor training
• Substandard inappropriate equipment
• Human wildlife conflict
• HIV/AIDS
• Apiphobia; through natural selection the African bee has been adapted for surviving in very harsh conditions
• Poor quality products; most of the honey is used for brewing local brew hence people tend not to need very good quality
• Low production; this is as a result of poor quality equipment

Egerton University offers a course in apiculture to BSc. Animal Production Students as well as to non agriculture students taking diploma courses. There is currently a lot of potential in beekeeping at the university and its environs but, which has not been exploited. There has not been a keen interest by people specifically farmers to take it up.

Egerton University is keen to buttress its training in beekeeping by improving its infrastructure as well as revamp its demonstration facility.

Members of the trilateral program (from Egerton University and Punjab Agricultural University) carried out an excursion to Baraka Agriculture College for clarifications of matters that had arisen from the discussion they had about beekeeping in Kenya.

The team also while on their way to Kerio Valley Development Authority (KVDA) to conduct an excursion whereby their main activity focused on honey production, met with marketers on the roadside selling unbranded hone.

There is a great need of strengthening apicultural research, enhancement of private-public sectors collaboration, promotion of honey markets and encouragement of sustainable and strong beekeepers networks.