EADD Kenya Country Project main objective is to set up 13 new chilling plants and work with 4 old cooling plants during the 4-year pilot period. Its project target is to reach 110,000 smallholder dairy families and 10,000 fodder farmers.
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The EADD Kenya project is being implemented in eight districts in Rift Valley including: Bomet, Buret, Keiyo, Kipkelion, Marakwet, Molo, Nandi North, Uasin Gishu and West Pokot and two districts in Central Province: Nyandarua and Nyeri districts. EADD Kenya Country office is also working closely with the already established cooling plants in Kipkelion Dairy Plant Limited, Ol Kalou Dairy Plant Limited, Tanykina Dairy Plant Limited and Siongiroi Dairy Plant Limited to improve on their efficiency and their profitability through various trainings on service delivery enhancement.
For the already existing chilling plants namely Tanykina, Kipkelion, Ol Kalou and Siongiroi Dairy Plants, their objectives are towards: expanding milk collection and cooling facilities at identified centers, marketing chilled raw milk to processors and paying farmers promptly, providing farmer training and extension services on dairy farming and lastly, setting up farmers’ service centres where they can obtain AI services, farm inputs, credit services, feed and fodder, information and skills on dairy farming. EADD through this partnership facilitate the farmers and their farmer associations in the following areas:
- assessing the feasibility of setting up a milk chilling plant and development of a business plan to guide the investment and operations of the milk chilling plant
- setting up of the chilling plant
- identify suitable operational manager and staff for the chilling plant operations and offer capacity building for the operations manager and staff with a clear exit strategy.
- technical assistance on general management for the staff and the board
- obtaining finance for the set up of the chilling plan and initial working capital.
- identifying milk buyers and working closely with the board to negotiate for sales contracts;
- operations of the chilling plant with the objectives of reducing costs and increasing output quality and sustained profitability in the long term;
- organizing learning trips to other successful dairy businesses and farming for the management committee, farmers and management staff to learn from how others have succeeded.
- assessing the feasibility of and establishing business development services that assist the farmer in accessing services that they need to improve their dairy businesses
- improving operations by advising on appropriate management technology that will assist the management to run the business better. This will mainly be, but is not limited to, information and communication technology (ICT)
- link farmers to (BDS) dairy service providers (AI, Vet, agrovets, dairy equipment suppliers)
- facilitate cattle registration with Kenya stud book
- develop best feed practices that are site specific
- facilitate farmers over a two year training course to improve on dairy production and enhance group leadership and dynamics
- facilitate linkages to high quality genetics and breeding program at affordable cost
EADD requires that the dairy farmer business associations need to meet some conditions before accessing these services. These conditions include a minimum of 1,000 farmers registering and contributing at least 10% equity of the cost of setting up a chilling plant. These 10% ranges from Kshs.1 million to Kshs.1.5 million depending on whether they will be constructing or leasing a building for the cooling plant.
Farmer mobilization and sensitization is on-going. We encourage farmers to take full ownership of their milk marketing through dairy farmer group participation and subsequent establishment and farmer owned chilling plants.
Staffing
EADD Kenya Country Office has 41 members of staff who have skills and expertise in the areas of sustainability, quality and dairy technology, business development and finance, animal research, research in feed and fodder and bovine genetics and artificial breeding technology.
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