Browsing: Farming in East Africa

This article aims to highlight the challenges and implications of COVID-19 in the agricultural sector using current industry trends and outcomes to forecast the impact of the pandemic on agricultural value chains and consumer behaviour in the short, medium and long term.  Most importantly, however, this report proffers actionable innovations and systems that can be adopted and scaled up to negate the effects of the pandemic on food supplies to urban areas and industrial processors in Nigeria. 

WHERE WE ARE NOW: 

Short term (1-3months)  

• Disruption of supply chains due to inter and intrastate border closures. An example being the pileup of trucks on the Kano-Kaduna road due to shutdowns on what is a key route for national grain distribution. 
• The stock of grains does not seem to be hampered but there is a risk it will if the

If any of us were given a warning by an alien, in a language we did not understand, with symbols we had never seen before, we would not emerge warned–which is a fact that is now driving legislative reform in Kenya to ensure warnings on pest control products are understandable to every farmer. The aim is to ensure farmers reap far higher yields without causing any damage to themselves or their land.

As it is, pest control products used in Kenya have been through around nine years of safety testing and more than 100 kinds of tests in order to gain approval for use in their countries of origin, such as the US, Australia and other national regimes that only approve pesticides when they are proven to be risk-free for the prescribed use.

Until they have achieved that, Kenya’s law prohibits their use in Kenya.

But even once they have…