WORKSHOP FOR VALUE CHAIN ACTORS ON DATA COLLECTION TO BE USED IN SIVCAP
Th Agricultural Sector Development Support Programme (ASDSP) is a 5 year programme that runs from 2017 to 2022, funded by the Swedish government through SIDA. Whose goal is to contribute to Transformation of crop, livestock and fishery production into commercially oriented enterprises that ensure sustainable food and nutrition security.
In order to implement ASDSP II which is the continuation of ASDSP I The County Department of Agriculture and Cooperative Development in conjunction with Agricultural Sector Development Support Programme (ASDSP) conducted a four day workshop whose aim was to collect data from the Value Chain Actors drawn from the four prioritized value chains; Cow milk, maize, fish and indegineous chickens that will be used in developing Strategic and integrated value chain action plan (SIVCAP).
While Officially opening the workshop, Chief Officer for Agriculture Wilson Lelei said that Strategic and Integrated Value Chain Action plan (SIVCAP) is the blue print in ASDSP II implementation with a view to ending poverty, hunger and ensure food and nutrition security through identification of opportunities and implementation of high impact innovation.
It illustrates the critical problems that hinder commercialization of agriculture (as informed by the Four priority value chains) in pursuit of economic development and food and nutrition security. SIVCAP is also meant to capture all the activities that the department of Agriculture and Cooperative Development intends to do in the next five years.
ASDSP II is designed to adhere to principles of inclusivity, simplicity and flexibility which are necessary for sustainability of prioritize value chains. It is aligned with the Constitution, Agricultural Policy, the new Swedish Strategy for Development Cooperation and other regional and global goals. It is also expected to consolidate the gains of ASDSP I an example is setting up of Nandi County Dairy Cooperative Union and 240 value chains, address the challenges of income, food and nutrition security ,unemployment and commercialization of prioritized value chains.
There are four key results that the ASDSP wants to achieve at the end namely;increased productivity of priority value chain,strengthened enterpreneural Skills of priority VCAs, Improved access to market by value chains actors and strengthened structures and capacities for consultation, collaboration,cooperation and coordination in the agricultural sector.
From the data collected at the workshop it showed that there is an estimate 1,110,830 indegineous chickens with 14,996,205 egg production and an average production per unit value chain actor of 7. For fish it showed that there is an average fish population of 1,550,000, number of fish ponds per value chain actor is 1 pond and fish area under prioritized value chain actors is (46.5ha)
When it comes to livelihood assessment Nandi county is below the poverty line in all the four value chains, in the few calculations done fish farming outshined the other value chains, hence their is need to work on improving productivity.
There is also need to enhance market access by value chain actors by improving access linkages for prioritized value chain actors,improving access to market information by value chain actors.