Maji mazuri New Modern market in Mwiki/HANDOUT
Nairobi Governor Sakaja Johnson has outlined how modern markets can help reduce food losses and ensure more of Kenya’s agricultural produce reaches consumers as the county races to complete and modernise 20 markets.
Sakaja said agricultural transformation should not end when food leaves the farm but extend to markets, storage facilities, processing plants and other stages of the food value chain.
Maji mazuri New Modern market in Mwiki/HANDOUT
He said properly designed markets should do more than provide trading spaces, arguing that they should help preserve the value of food through cold storage, aggregation, grading, packaging, processing and efficient distribution.
“Agricultural transformation will not be won on the farm alone. It will also be won in the last 50 kilometres in our markets, our cold rooms, our processing factories, our kitchens and increasingly, in computer code,” Sakaja said.
Sakaja said the objective was not to claim that markets themselves increase food production, but to ensure that food already produced by farmers is not lost before reaching consumers.
“A market should be where food stops rotting, not where it goes to rot,” he said.
The governor cited research by the World Resources Institute, which estimates that Kenya loses or wastes up to 40 per cent of the food it produces annually, approximately nine million tonnes valued at about Sh72 billion.
He said cutting these losses by half could make enough food available to feed more than seven million additional Kenyans every year, without necessarily requiring millions of additional acres to be cultivated.
“The farmer did her job. She planted, tended, harvested and transported her produce. But too often, the system between her and the plate did not do its job,” Sakaja said.
“When there is a glut of tomatoes, we should not be watching them spoil. We should be processing them into paste. When there is an oversupply of potatoes, we should be creating new products, new industries and new jobs,” he said.
Sakaja pointed to Nairobi’s Dishi Na County school feeding programme as an example of how predictable institutional demand can strengthen the agricultural value chain.
The programme feeds 324,000 learners in 230 public schools and requires about 37 tonnes of food every school day, including rice, beans, vegetables and other produce.
“That is not just a nutrition intervention. It is a daily demand for rice, beans, ndengu, vegetables and other agricultural produce. And predictable demand is something a farmer can take to the bank,” Sakaja said.
He said the county was keen to connect cooperatives and farmers from producing counties to Nairobi’s institutional markets and kitchens through transparent and competitive procurement.
“Let us connect your cooperatives to our kitchens. Your farmers to our markets. Your production to our consumption,” he said.
Sakaja said modern markets, institutional demand, cold-chain infrastructure, processing and technology should work together to shorten the distance between farmers and consumers.
He said reducing food losses would improve food security, ensure farmers retain more value from their produce and give consumers access to quality and affordable food.
