Kenya
The acidity that stunts maize in Kericho and Nandi is the same acidity tea wants. A tea bush is happiest around pH 4.5 to 5.5, roughly where a maize crop starts failing. So a smallholder with tea on one side of the road and maize on the other is farming two crops with...
Kenya
A French bean crop is in the ground about seven to nine weeks. That is the whole window. If the nutrition is wrong in week two you find out in week six, when pods come off soft or curved and there is no time left to fix it. Kenya supplies a large share of...
Kenya
Counterfeit and substandard fertilizer has been a documented problem in the Kenyan market. Bags have reached farmers containing sand and inert filler, regulators have confirmed substandard product in circulation, and consignments have been impounded. Most fertilizer...
Kenya
A farmer in Embu applies the same phosphorus he applied last year, and the year before. The maize still stunts. He assumes he needs more fertilizer. He almost certainly does not, because on strongly acidic ground most of the phosphorus he buys never reaches the crop...
Kenya
A Kenyan avocado consignment can fail before it leaves the country, and the reason is often a single number on an inspector’s report. Dry matter content. Fruit that tests below the threshold for its variety does not clear for export, and a grower who harvests...
Kenya
A Kenyan rose grower’s job isn’t to grow roses. It’s to land a flower at the Royal FloraHolland auction in Aalsmeer, or at a Tesco distribution center in Reading, that meets a specific set of measurable quality criteria – stem length, stem...
