Interim Progress Report to the Stichting af Jochnick Foundation Youth Empowerment in Sustainable Agriculture

Transcription

1 Interim Progress Report to the Stichting af Jochnick Foundation Youth Empowerment in Sustainable Agriculture Project: Location: Youth Empowerment through Sustainable Agricultures (YESA) Phase II Trans Nzoia, western Kenya Report period: July December 2014 Grant: 105,490 over 3 years

2 2 Project Background The Youth Empowerment through Sustainable Agriculture (YESA) Phase II is the scale-up stage of Farm Africa s work with youth groups in the Trans Nzoia district of the North Rift part of Kenya. The project aims to reduce poverty among out-of-school youths by developing agricultural enterprises that increase incomes and demonstrate agriculture as a viable livelihood option. Youth groups have been supported to choose from a selection of agricultural enterprises including vegetable growing for export market, passion fruit farming, poultry production, mushroom farming and fish farming during. This project focuses on out-of-school youth groups, a departure from the pilot stage which also worked with in-school youth. The programme has been carefully designed around the need of groups in this demographic. Project activities and outcomes are being carefully documented so that Farm Africa can share the model with government and NGO actors. Under the current phase of YESA enterprise development shifted to a more market-led contract farming approach, aimed at making enterprises more profitable, establishing more sustainable income source and contributing to the integrity and sustainability of groups. Summary of Project Progress In this reporting period activities have focused on technical training, group enhancement, group dynamics training and data collection on household incomes accruing from new enterprises. All groups have realised incomes from production units and demonstration plots growing French beans, snowpeas, cabbages and chillies for contracts with Mace Food and CANKEN International. Chilli harvests have been concentrated in this reporting period, providing an opportunity for training and demonstration in harvesting and post-harvest management of the crop. With increased funds the groups have been able to renew the land lease payments for the next planting season. Individual adopter farmers have now also engaged in contract farming of chilli for Mace Food Ltd. Significant income also continues to be generated from produce grown and marketed outside contract farming arrangements and the groups are investing in enterprises such as poultry and fish farming. The project is making headway in sharing learning from the implementation of the YESA approach with external stakeholders with the view to promote and scale up the model. Although the project conducted an ongoing midterm evaluation, the findings from which were unfortunately not available at the time of reporting but the results will be shared with the Jochnick Foundation in the next interim report or at a time preferred by the Trustees. Project Activities and Achievements Objective 1: To engage and excite youths in farming activities as an alternative and viable source of agriculture-based livelihood and rural employment An additional 182 youth were recruited into the project in this reporting period increasing the number to 790 organised into 34 groups. The two groups that had left the project because they were not able to secure land have now been fully replaced and demonstration and

3 3 technical training of these two groups is already underway. While the total number of participants is below the target (850), demand for places remains high. Many of these young men and women do not yet meet the criteria for participation but the project is committed to engaging youth outside the project by providing short term employment opportunities, engaging in aggregation or marketing activities. The project is supporting these individuals to use this income to save funds to lease land, buy inputs and form producer groups. Technical training on crop husbandry for all crops produced under the contracts has been ongoing in the reporting period. Training has been delivered in land preparation and transplanting, crop management, fertilisation, crop protection and pest control. Further training has also been delivered in harvesting, post-harvest handling and storage. The project delivers technical training through demonstration, which means that the concentration of different training topics is determined by the crop and associated planting and harvesting seasons. Knowledge transfer and skills acquisition among the groups has therefore been determined by the agricultural calendar for the crops. Training delivered to the 13 groups growing green vegetables was concentrated in the first half of 2014 during the rainy season and production period for these crops. This reporting period has seen the chilli groups transplanting their seed into main fields and harvesting the previous crops while the vegetable groups have concentrated on harvesting and marketing. Within the reporting period 225 youth (female 78, male 147) were trained on technical Chillies drying as part of post harvest management crop production skills. An extensive training programme in group dynamics in new youth groups is planned for In preparation for this a series of training needs assessments and capacity assessments of 587 members has been carried out in Group dynamics training was conducted by Farm Africa with 28 group leaders in preparation for a full training programme to be conducted in Training session of agri-business, marketing and financial management has continued into this reporting period with the first phase of training carried out and the second unit planned for the next period. In total 587 youth have received training in business skills and have been supported to develop business plans in this reporting period. Training in value addition was conducted with 30 group leaders to be cascaded down to group members in the following reporting period. Refresher training in agribusiness development has also been conducted with new members in response to the turnover of group membership. So far 10 demo farms have been established for French beans, 2 for snow peas and 1 for cabbages. In this reporting period Farm Africa has distributed 100 g of planting seed, 15 kg planting fertilizers, 10 kg top dressing fertilizer, and permitted pesticides and fungicides of various types required at different stages of the crop growth. Specific demonstration in the

4 4 application of improved technologies has also been delivered in this reporting period. Demonstration on the use of drip irrigation kits and water pumping equipment was carried out during the Kitale Agricultural Show in November which was attended by 2 representatives from each of the groups. As part of the demonstration the participants were introduced to the business skills required for accumulation and reinvestment in technologies in order to develop their enterprises. The project conducted a soil sampling exercise to ensure groups are planting in suitable areas and helping the project to budget for required inputs to improve soils and address deficiencies or excess of nutrients. Samples were collected by project staff, taken to a laboratory for analysis and results were shared with farmer groups. The project continues to service 202 lead adopters, who have each received start up inputs in this period. Lead adopters have been cultivating and marketing chillies exclusively. Practical training has been conducted on demo plots where all 202 lead adopters have learned horticultural practices and apply what there have learned during demonstration on their own land. No lead adopters have established businesses in cultivation and marketing of green vegetables but the project is promoting production as an enterprise to be adopted by individual farmers and replicator farms and are in the process of having them set aside land for next season's crop after the maize crop has been harvested. Objective 2: To identify, strengthen and support access to markets, value chains, value addition and market research to benefit youth groups. Market linkages have continued to be strengthened through open dialogue between youth group members and buyers of agricultural produce, principally Mace Ltd and CANKEN. Collective marketing through youth groups has also strengthened market linkages with channels of communication opening between groups and between group members facilitating collective negotiation and aggregation of produce. Marketing groups have been established to coordinate with the two buyers; there is a marketing group for vegetables (French beans, snow peas and cabbages) which links farmers to CANKEN and a chilli marketing group through which groups market chillies to Mace Ltd. Aggregation of produce continues to take place on-farm and bulking at designated collection centres is yet to take place due to challenges related to distance and transportation costs. This has resulted in higher transaction costs because collection has been carried out on individual farms. The project has explored options such as providing bicycles to help facilitate transportation and strengthening marketing associations through education tours and farmer field days. The project will establish permanent collection centres with solar drying and cold storage facilities in The project has also provided ongoing support to develop market linkages including monitoring visits, technical advice and referral of groups and marketing associations to technical departments within governments and other organisations. Technical advisors to the two buyers have also played an important role in this activity, providing advice to farmers on the application of chemicals, quality standards based on feedback from the markets they serve, and adherence to contracts. Refresher training on value addition and post-harvest handling has been conducted for the groups growing green vegetables. The groups have been shown how to carry produce and arrange it in boxes and mats, allowing for aeration. After the chilli harvest, farmers have been shown how to arrange chillies for drying, where to store produce and techniques for

5 5 cleaning produce, drying and managing moisture content. Lead adopters who have attended the 2014 Kitale Agricultural Show were given a presentation on value addition of French beans, snow peas and chillies. The project has recruited a nutrition specialist who will be responsible for designing and implementing training on nutritional value and home preparation of chillies, beans and peas, processes that increase the shelf life of produce for home consumption and provide a potentially profitable outlet for rejected produce. The Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) has provided a source of financing to the groups outside funds provided from donors, helping the groups to cater for expenses for enterprise development that the project has not been able to provide e.g. hire of land and labour. The 13 groups that applied for YEDF funds in previous periods are continuing repayments and applying for new loans from the same fund. In July and August 9 more groups were able to apply to utilise funds from the government. The project supports this by providing reference for the groups to the Ministry of Youth Enterprise Development. The recently launched County UWEZO (a Swahili word meaning able or ability ) fund which is geared towards providing access to micro-credit to both the youth and women is yet to reach the project groups. This is to some extent due to the fact that this loan facility has more stringent requirements but the project has introduced the group to the scheme and will support the groups with references. Objective 3: To document and disseminate knowledge, information, research and the YESA youth groups agro-business model to communities, stakeholders, government, donors and other interested parties. Within this period the project has attended 2 meeting with Tranz Nzoia county government addressing the county agriculture and youth strategy. The first meeting revolved around partnership improvement and how to incorporate youth into the county agenda. The second meeting served as an opportunity to brainstorm ideas on developing weather advisory services in the county. Both meetings provided an opportunity for the YESA teams to present achievements and challenges experienced with the project, as well as ideas for future improvements. The YESA stand at the 2014 A.S.K. Kitale show provided an Youth group members at the A.S.K Agricultural Show opportunity to provide information on the project to 73 stakeholders from various sectors. The project sponsored 62 youth representatives from the projects to promote YESA s achievements as well as establish links to other local stakeholders. This period has seen the final editing and publication of a project factsheet for wider dissemination of the YESA approach to stakeholders and donors. The document includes

6 6 information on the YESA strategy, donors, expected outcomes and achievements so far. The factsheet has been distributed government and private sector stakeholders and donors. The project has participated in forums including the Tranz Nzoia County Agriculture Strategic Forum, the Kenya Horticulture Competitiveness Project (KHCP) partnership forum and the Agriculture Sector Development Support Project (ASDSP). Farm Africa staff attended a meeting with representatives from the USAID Kenya Horticultural Competitiveness Project and Mace Food Ltd in which the Head of Delegation for USAID praised the project. Objective 4: Encourage active participation in local leadership and governance and access to information and relevant networks. The Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) continues to provide interns to YESA Youth-Friendly Centres (YFCs) to provide training in IT, business skills, entrepreneurship, mentorship and volunteering. This training is intended to sharpen leadership skills of youth and improve civic engagement. The Centres are open to all members of the community. Training is ongoing and 11 trainees have already completed the first stage of training and have registered for the next stage of training in the coming period. Key outputs and outcomes of the project so far This section tracks some of the progress towards key project outcomes and outputs in this reporting period. A more detailed assessment of project outcomes will be available when the project s midterm report is available. So far the project has reached 790 (446 male, 344 female) direct beneficiaries through 34 out-of-school youth groups. This includes 225 group members in 9 groups established under the pilot phase and 565 group members in 25 groups established under the current YESA II project. Other members of the community have benefited from training delivered by the project and benefited from new marketing opportunities in the region generated via the marketing groups. In this reporting period the 13 green vegetable groups have generated Ksh 622,430 ($6,781) from sales and the 17 chilli groups have generated Ksh 253,004 ($2,706) in this reporting period. In the reporting period the groups have also generated Ksh 1,426,675 ($15,543) from produce sold to non-contracted markets, including fruit, fish, poultry, tree nurseries and mushrooms. So far 202 adopter farmers with land of an average size of 0.25 acres each have successfully harvested their chilli crops during this reporting period although some were affected by pest and drought and plants were transplanted in September. Training manuals for each of the crops under contract have been produced by the contracting companies. One value chain map of fresh vegetables is now in use by the groups involved in vegetable production.

7 7 The Kenya Horticulture Competitiveness Project (KHCP) and the Ministry of Agriculture ASDSP (Agriculture Sector Development Support Project), which is funded by the World Bank, has recognised the YESA project as an important player in agri-business activities targeting youth in the area. Case Study Paul Angulu is 29 years old and is married to Justine Mukalukha 24 years. They are both members of the Sinyereri Youth Shapers. Paul finished high school in 2002 where he studied Mechanical Engineering at college for two years, but was not able to complete the course because of financial difficulties. Paul and Justine have access to three acres but before they joined the groups were not in a position to plough and plant it all. Paul and Justine were only able to harvest kg of maize per year. Usually the money they earn from the surplus maize only lasted for around one month. In October 2012, Paul and a neighboring young farmer decided to set up the Sinyereri Youth Shapers to try and improve their situation and in May 2013, the Sinyereri Youth Shapers were selected to become part of the YESA Phase II project. They were given initial training in group dynamics, data collection and value addition. Farm Africa presented the group with some market research which has shown that there is a good demand for sugar snaps, snow peas and French beans, and chillies and one group member has contributed an acre of their land to be used as a group demonstration plot. The groups signed a contract with Mace Foods Ltd and have been producing chillies to meet this contract along with other vegetables. In October Paul and the other group members had harvested the first crop of their chillies. When the rains did not come as expected, Farm Africa helped the group to care for their chilli seedlings in the nursery so they could be transplanted to the fields when the rains finally arrived. With our support, and their hard work, the group harvested a good crop of chillies and were busy drying them and preparing them for sale. Challenges and Lessons Learnt High turnover of membership continues to pose a challenge to the sustainability of youth groups and the extent of substantive learning and knowledge transfer and replication of agri-

8 8 enterprises by individual youth. While turnover rates have improved among the groups compared to the previous phase of YESA this remains a problem. It is anticipated that group turnover is likely to go down as new groups become more established and income from sales of produce increases. In the meantime refresher training in group dynamics has continued but a review of the approach to promoting groups sustainability and maintaining low turnover will be needed for any scale up or replication of the YESA approach for out-ofschool youth groups. That said, Farm Africa has pioneered this approach in out-of-school youth groups and the identification of the need for training in group dynamics has been instrumental to the success of the model. One key constraint to the expansion of cultivated land and crop diversification for enterprise development among replicator farmers has been the need to acquire land early enough before land is planted with maize. Lack of land has been a significant constraint to groups ability to cultivate crops with negative consequences to both demonstration and to enterprise development. The project has been largely successful at mobilising groups with sufficient advance time to acquire and prepare land for planting; however multiple factors that determine the availability of land must be considered when applying the YESA approach in new locations. The real impact of the project will be seen not through group based enterprise development but through the replication of what has been learnt in terms of both production and business skills by individual farmers. The project has proved successful in achieving knowledge transfer, but replication takes time and the project will not be in a position to monitor this outcome within the project period. That said the adopter farmer model has been fairly successful, with 202 farmers of total 750 already engaged in contract farming on their own land. Youth groups have been sceptical about using credit facilities because of fears of legal action being taken in the event of non payment or default. This presents a constraint on the expansion to agri-enterprises and the development of production at scale because farmers are not able to mobilise resources to invest in inputs and communal production will remain common practice. Farm Africa continues to work with banks and microfinace institution to help promote the design of products that work for young farmers and training in financial literacy and business skills continues to promote the use of financial services in enterprise expansion. The contract farming model has allowed groups to access markets that were previously inaccessible, however there remain key challenges to the groups realising the full benefit of this. The project had not originally accounted for the need for producers to be achieving economies of scale before they were able to access affordable transport and incentivise buyers to provide transport to collect produce. Marketing Associations will play an instrumental role in this process and the groups need to facilitate aggregation of produce before issues of transportation to markets can be resolved. While there have been no reported cases of misappropriation of funds, it is felt that as turnover from field school based enterprises continues to grow the groups will require a stronger monitoring system to avoid the misappropriation of income. This will involve, among other systems of monitoring, the introduction of a training component on security.

9 9 Breakdown of expenditure Farm Africa remains tremendously grateful for the support of the Jochnick Foundation for their support towards the YESA Phase II project. The project has so far utilised 75% of funds from Jochnick Foundation, but a plan is in place to ensure that all funds are fully utilised by the end of the project including the next expected instalment. Total Project Budget Total Project Spend Yr1 & Yr2 (2013- Dec 2014) Cumulated % Spend (based on Project Lifetime) AFJ Actual (Apr Dec 2014) EUR % EUR Income Notification Committed Income 105,490 Income received to date from AFJ 70,277 Expenses Personnel support costs (field and country office) 1 276, ,653 53% 23,904 Direct field project operational costs 2 65,008 40,935 63% 8,331 Equipment costs % 106 Direct project activity costs 4 - Objective1:Youth into farming 253,690 55,701 22% 13,393 Objective2:Enhancing market linkages 33,798 5,550 16% 607 Objective3:Sharing our knowledge 49,792 26,857 54% 2,850 Objective4:Enabling youth partnerships, referrals and networks 7,325 2,460 34% 263 Admin. Support costs - 7% 48,088 17,080 36% 3,452 Total Expenses 735, ,077 40% 52,906