Last week the Daily Nation reported how the income of Nyandarua potato farmers grew from KES 4,800 to KES 440,000 per acre. The combination of a boost in yield and a skyrocketing sales price is the recipe how in Nyandarua a potato income per acre explodes from KES 4,800 with Shangi to KES 440,000 with Markies

June 2023: PSA’s director provides a deep dive in our potato upscaling strategy in the interview from Saturday June 17^th in Standard News' ''Smart Harvest''. 

Read the whole article here! 

June 2023: In order to fulfill this growing demand, the decision was made to invest in various new machinery, such as in more tractors, ridgers and planters. Simultaneously we also needed more staff members to operate these machines, to service our growing numbers of farmers in the field and to ensure adequate customer service.

March 2023: In 2022 first major steps were taken in establishing this nationwide potato value chain. This resulted in the start of producing Kenyan chips for KFC in Kenya. AgricoPSA has been playing a key role in this consortium. It supplies the prescribed potato variety Markies – Kenya’s number one potato processing variety - to farmers who are interested in supplying KFC’s processors such as Simplifine.

December 2022: PSA has been supporting the efforts of the Kenyan and Dutch governments in streamlining Kenya’s potato policy framework for many years. Last December PSA hosted visitors from KEPHIS and from the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture. During this meeting we explained our current role in the Kenyan potato value chain.

October 2022:Tropical Heat’s vision behind Heroes was to create the perfect crisps. By using state of the art cutting techniques, a unique blanching process, high-tech packing systems and layered atmospheric packing, they accomplished their mission. Naturally top quality potatoes have been an important foundation for creating the perfect crisps.

Jeremiah Mwangi is a modern potato trader buying and selling Markies & Destiny potatoes. He visits smallholders in a region and buys the potatoes from their various farms in the fields

Markies has already become the number one for potato chips in Kenya. Simultaneously Markies is also increasingly demanded by Kenya’s crisping industry. A good example is Norda Industries who favors our Markies variety for their potato crisps.

NCF prefers Markies, Kenya’s number one potato crisping variety, for producing its Golden Valley frozen chips. And as the packaging says, these are indeed made from the finest Kenyan potatoes! Situated at the heart of the farming hub of the Rift Valley, NCF not only supplies the Kenyan market with its potato chips, but it also exports these to Uganda amongst others

Wedgehut is one of the Kenyan potato processing companies from the  Mavuno Zaidi™ program from Syngenta, supported by the Sustainable Trade Initiative IDH. The goal of this program is to provide 100,000 farmers access to finance in the coming years.

In July 2022 a four year potato market partnership has been formalised between Yara, Bayer, Co-operative Bank, Simplifine and Agrico PSA. By 2026, 30,000 potato farmers in Kenya will benefit from this partnership.

Kenyan consumers are now enjoying Kenyan produced chips in the KFC restaurants. Yesterday Simplifine has started its chips production from Markies potatoes grown in Kenya. From today onwards Simplifine will supply KFC’s restaurants all over Kenya with its Kenyan produced French Fries.

PSA is the first farm in Kenya where the entire history of all of its produced potatoes is fully traceable now. This matters because modern retailers – such as KFC – often demand such traceability from its value chain partners, in order to comply to their food safety policy.

Agrico PSA is proud to communicate another impressive milestone reached: now over 50,000 Kenyan potato farmers are digitally partnering via our Facebook page! PSA’s Facebook page has evolved into a platform where potato knowledge is shared between Kenyan farmers, connections between farmers and off-takers are supported and value chain developments are shared.

Providing potato farmers access to affordable (micro) finance is an important element for further upscaling Kenya’s potato value chain. Via partnerships with financiers, PSA supports potato farmers in acquiring access to micro finance. 

There has been a challenge of accessing certified potato seeds over the years, and we came in in 2015 to bridge the gap and introduce different varieties as per market demands to the farmers.

Good Tanzanian seed potato news: Markies, Arizona & Manitou have been recommended for official release. PSA is an abbreviation of Potato Services Africa. Although our main focus is on Kenya, we are also a regional hub for nearby countries. PSA has been supplying its partners in Uganda and the DRC with Kenyan seed potatoes for many years. At short notice we will support farmers in Tanzania with access to high quality certified seed potatoes of our modern Agrico varieties from Kenya too.

For 2022 we will upscale our partnership with NPCK’s Viazi Kings. Viazi Kings is a modern platform that provides farmers’ access to seed potatoes at affordable prices. This week we hosted a team from the NPCK and Viazi Kings at our seed potato farm in Nakuru county. We discussed the status and the developments in the Kenyan potato value chain and what farmers need to do to benefit from potato farming and certified seed. We are looking forward to see our partnership develop further!

One of our pillars of a sustainable potato value chain is providing farmers access to finance. Today we hosted a team from Platinum Credit Kenya, a micro-finance company with a vision to provide emergency financial solutions across Africa. The company has become a major regional player with a footprint in all counties in Kenya, and it has over 100 branches. We are planning for a strong joint approach with all potato value chain partners to empower and train the Meru farmers for better yields on Markies potatoes coming season. Our collaboration with Platinum Credit Kenya is a nice example how we support farmers in acquiring access to finance.

Agrico PSA participated in a potato marketing meeting with KCEP-CRAL Plus, an initiative to support farmers to recover from the negative effects of COVID-19. The key participants were ead farmers, potato buyers implementing officers from MoALF and the KCEP-CRAL Programme Coordinating Unit.

Kudos to another Markies potato off-taker, who peels, cuts, packs & distributes fresh chips. Value addition is the sure way in profitable potato farming. Enjoy the potato processing video!

In today’s videos you will learn more about how to prepare your land prior to planting of your potatoes, that includes an explanation on how and why to undertake weed killing (manual & chemical) and then proceed to ploughing, harrowing and levelling of the fields.

The certified Markies variety seeds are available for sale at the company all year round, to facilitate the farmers grow the variety for off-takers all year round.

Read more in the news article from Nakuru News!