Resource information
Potato plays an important role in Kenya’s food and nutrition security plan - part of the Big Four
Economic Development Strategy. The crop is cultivated by approximately 800,000 smallholder farmers
and a few medium and large-scale farmers. The sector employs another 2.5 million people -
transporters, distributors, processors, vendors, retailers, and exporters - who derive their livelihoods
along the value chain. Production has fluctuated over the last decade, despite a steady increase in area
from 122,542 to 212,976 ha from 2010 to 2019, with productivity steadily declining from 22 t/ha in
2010 to less than 10 t/ha in 2019, representing a loss of 2.7 million tonnes of food, or an additional
100,000 ha needed to meet the same production as 2010. The opportunities for unit-area yield gains
in potato outcompete other crops, making potato a strong option for addressing food, economic and
nutrition security in Kenya.
To address losses in productivity and fragmented value chains, Accelerated Value Chain Development
(AVCD) supported the development of a private sector-led value chain, integrating county
governments in leading/supporting interventions to disseminate productivity-enhancing technologies,
strengthen seed systems and develop farmer producer organizations (FPOs) to improve equality and
opportunity in the value chain. In AVCD phase 1 (2015–2018), the potato value chain (PVC) covered
the counties of Elgeyo-Marakwet (EMC), Meru, Nandi, and Uasin Gishu (UGC), while Phase 2 (2019–
2021) was in Bungoma and Taita Taveta.
The depth and breadth of the AVCD potato component reached and benefited thousands of
smallholder farmers. Over six years, 74,690 smallholder farmers were reached with AVCD agricultural
and nutrition-related interventions, of whom 72,260 applied productivity-enhancing technologies
following season-long practical training on learning farms hosted by farmer groups and led by
government extension workers.
As a result of increasing production and productivity, farmers collectively generated 33,977,789 USD
in value of sales from potato: 27.6M USD in phase 1 and 6.3M USD in phase 2. This represents an
increase in the value of sales generated per farmer per hectare of 1,348 to 2,367 USD and 481 to
1,322 USD in phases 1 and 2, respectively. This further represents project-direct return on
investment of 1 to 9.79 USD on the 3.47M USD USAID investment in the potato value chain.
The return is expected to be notably higher when taking into account the value of sales generated in
phase 1 counties since the project ended there in 2018.
This increase in value of sales was also accompanied by increases in gross margin in phase 1 from a
baseline 721 USD/ha to 1,680 USD/ha, demonstrating that the increase was not solely due to increases
in production costs but also to increases in farmer profits.
In phase 2 (exclusive of the extension component) farmer yields increased by 49% from 7.7 to 11.5
t/ha which, over a final area of 6,096 ha of 17,779 smallholder farmers, represented an additional
23,165 tonnes of food produced over two cropping seasons compared to baseline yields, and which
contributed to greater sales of potato. Table I summarizes the main achievements of the potato
component of AVCD.
