Migori: Concerns are escalating among sweet potato farmers in Migori County as the only existing factory to consume their produce remained closed with no hope of operating any time soon. The now moribund Getong’anya Sweet Potato plant was constructed on a strategy of opening up a steady market for farmers to sell their multi-hundred tonnes of the crop produced yearly within the region.
According to Kenya News Agency, the Sh117 million-worth factory launched in early 2022 in Kuria West Sub-County was expected to process over 100 tonnes of sweet potatoes daily, giving the local farmers confidence of minting huge income from their deliveries at the plant. The factory was meant to add value to the crop by producing potato chips and crisps, potato flavour juices and potato flours for making ‘chapati and mandazi, among a host of other food items.
However, as it stands now, the silver lining that existed at the initial stages of the factory life is no longer there and farmers are now forced to battle with serious exploitation from middlemen and women who buy their produce at throwaway prices due to lack of steady market. Buyers from as far as Nairobi have been paying peanuts for a sack of potatoes in the wake of a visible glut in the production of the crop in the region.
‘A spot check by KNA at the factory early this week revealed a different picture of the factory that was launched with pomp and colour three years ago by the then Devolution Cabinet Minister (CS) Eugene Wamalwa. The plant is currently a pale shadow of its former self with claims of lack of money and qualified personnel being peddled as some of the factors curtailing its operation.
While giving a speech during the annual State of the County address to the local County Assembly in late February, Migori Governor Dr. Ochilo Ayacko announced that the leadership was scouting for a partner financier to run the plant on behalf of the county. He expressed a myriad of challenges bedevilling operations at the factory, ranging from lack of financial power to lack of technical experts to oversee the operation of the factory cogs.
Nonetheless, local critics have analysed the whole dilemma in running the factory and visualised it in another dimension that points a finger at the county leadership as the course for the factory’s death. ‘Without mincing words, the factory will never come into operation any time soon unless the county leadership stops messing up with money meant to operationalise it,’ claimed one resident and a politician, John Mang’era.
Before going down in 2024, the factory had managed to trigger a flurry in sweet potato growing among the locals who rushed to lease big farms and plant the crop, believing that the venture would earn them huge income and change their lives. Within a span of four months of its inception, the factory had managed to trigger a massive sweet potato farm development in the region and a sharp increase in production that saw earnings shoot up by over half a billion shillings from the previous earnings according to an agricultural field officer in Migori, Martin Okello.
Statistics from the local agriculture office indicate that farmers from the area earned Sh1.5 billion during the 2022/2023 financial year and by the end of the first quarter of 2023/2024 financial year, the earnings increased by Sh0.5 billion to Sh2 billion. The crop that was initially produced in Kuria West subcounty alone was to fast spread to other parts of the county, with many farmers from Kuria East, Suna West, Suna East and Uriri subcounties embracing it following the presence of the factory within the region.
Sweet potato has become the fourth-best-produced crop in the county after sugarcane, tobacco and maize and is fast overtaking the former crops in profit-making at the moment. Migori County is now listed as the second-largest producer of orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) with 11,312 hectares under cultivation after Homa Bay County, which is the leading producer with an area of 24,268 hectares under the crop. Getong’anya sweet potato factory was meant to do value addition by making potato chips, potato flavour juices and potato chapati flours among a host of other food items.