Value addition at Greenleaf Veggies addressing food insecurity
One of the major contributors to food scarcity in the country has been massive post-harvest losses that occur due to lack of value addition and inadequate cold chain facilities. Food Agriculture Organization’s (FAO 2021) report on food loss assessments, approximates that Kenya losses between 20 – 50% of its agricultural production due to post-harvest losses.
However, if farmers in the country can recalibrate their way of thinking towards agro-based manufacturing, Kenya can significantly minimize this wastage and increase the quality of products and their shelf life through value addition.
In Masinga area, County of Machakos, Nzivo Katoo, the founder of Greenleaf Veggies is adding value to traditional vegetables such Cowpeas (Kunde), Managu, Terere among others by drying them for future use. The company washes the vegetables and take them through a natural drying process.
“From there we spread them out in open sun where we let them dry by the heat of the sun with constant turning and ensuring we separate the vegetables to enable air and heat to flow through drying the leaves and not cooking them,” he said. Greenleaf was founded in the midst of the pandemic after seeing the struggles most people were facing in getting vegetable; especially vegetables that have the nutritional value needed to battle the Covid 19. During the pandemic, people would come home and find all shops closed.
“One of our customers said they had to eat ugali and beef every day because mama mbogas had closed shop. We saw a huge shift of people moving to indigenous and organic foods, which have higher nutrient composition than the alternatives found in the market. I thought that bringing to the market organic dried African veggies would solve a lot of the challenges people were facing and at the same time would encourage the introduction of African cuisines into the global market by making the African traditional vegetables available in their original taste,” Nzivo explained
His journey in value addition is drawn from seeing his mother doing it while he was still young and preserving them for future use. This, he avers cushioned them during dry period which is synonymous with Ukambani region. “Professionally, I’m a data scientist but I have had an eye on solving the challenges faced in the agricultural sector for a very long time. I took an agribusiness course at Miramar international college to be able to understand most of the things that I needed in my journey. All the knowledge I required for processing and drying the vegetables came from the experience I had acquired from drying for family consumption and researching on the internet. I still keep an eye on new information that can help me ensure that the drying process is efficient and we can keep improving on it.
Value addition is anchored in the Food Security and Manufacturing Pillars of the Big 4 Agenda of the Kenya Government Manifesto. The government has put in place measures that seek to expand food production and supply in the country as well as a concerted effort towards the reduction of food prices to ensure affordability to all citizens. Under the two pillars, the government has prioritized textiles and apparel, leather products, agro-processing and construction materials. To promote agro-processing, the Government is focusing on tea, coffee, meat, sugar, dairy, fruits, and vegetables, in order to obtain more value and create an additional 200,000 jobs in the country.
“A value-added product is a saleable commodity that has been enhanced with additional qualities that make it worth and fetches higher price than the raw materials used to make it. For instance, we have 2 pack sizes that we currently distribute where the 80gms sell at Kes 150 and 50gms at Kes 100. Value added products are made to be more convenient, more attractive, more palatable and easier to use than the raw ingredients,” he said.
“We are driven by the Mantra ‘Thinking and creating opportunities.’ The value addition farming revolution that we have initiated in this area that has traditionally been regarded as dry is meant to motivate more farmers to embrace high yielding, high value crops that will give them more returns and economically empower them. We have shown that it can be done, and this is our response to the clarion call by the government to take our own initiative in addressing food insecurity. We currently plant vegetable and source from close to 20-30 local farmers but we have a capacity of increasing to 200 farmers with the increase in market demand for our products in this region,” Nzivo says.
Greenleaf Veggies majorly sells their products through social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and WhatsApp where customers can make an order and delivery made at their doorsteps. The company has partnered with Sendy to deliver products to customers safely, cheaply, and efficiently. This has enabled them to have a huge reach and also reduce costs on both delivery and a physical shop. Currently, they deliver between 500 and 800 packs per month. They are also looking forward to start supplying restaurants and supermarkets and help them reduce food wastage caused by expiry of fresh vegetables.
“Our main challenge at the moment is that not many people know about dried veggies and we have to focus our marketing budget on educating people about dried veggies. It is also an uphill task to get supermarkets and retailers to stock our products for we also have to educate them on what dried veggies are,” he said
It makes sense that Kenyans should explore biodiversity. Kenya has ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, the globally negotiated agreement committed to sustainable use of biodiversity. Consequently, agro biodiversity is being touted as a solution to the biting water stresses facing Kenya. Indigenous vegetables and fruits are easy to manage, can withstand high and unpredictable temperatures, and are known to have high nutritional value and contain high concentrates of micronutrients, including iron.
