Practice Notes
Farm technology on Kenyan farms - sensors, drones, apps and machines - judged by what the instruments recorded rather than by what the brochure promised.
How to judge a farm app before you put a season into it
When M-Farm sent prices by text, the share of farmers asking middlemen fell from 50 to 23 percent, and growers paid 10 KSH a message instead of the usual 1. That is the test to hold the next app against.
How to work out if farm sensors will pay on your farm
No published figure says how many acres a sensor system needs. US corn data puts savings at $13 to $25 an acre, and one cited sensor set at $8,000, which is the sum you can rerun with your own quote and crop.
Your own weather station can tell you when to spray, even without a forecast
A survey of 217 smallholders in South Africa's Eastern Cape found forecast access follows radio, phone, land size and extension contact. Across our five stations, a good spray window existed in only 19 percent of hours last month.
Rice blast can cut a Kenyan acre from 25 bags to 10
A court has capped rice imports at 250,000 metric tonnes a year. For a grower in Mwea or a rainfed hub, the money question is which constraint on your own block is actually holding the bags down.
What the Kenya Dairy Board budget cut means for your milk grading
National milk output climbed to 5.52 billion litres between 2021 and 2025, yet the Kenya Dairy Board is enforcing standards on less money. The part that reaches your pay is grading consistency at the collection point.
Farm tech in Kenya: apps, sensors, extension or automation?
Of 4,126 smallholders trained in one World Bank project, just 394 were still logging afterwards. That gap, not the hardware spec, is what decides whether a purchase pays back on your block.
Water mattered more than disease control in two Kenyan coffee trials
Kilimo News reported Kenya's coffee output has fallen from nearly 150,000 tonnes in the 1980s to about 50,000 today. Trials in Kiambu and Embu show what a grower can change this season, and which gap is biggest.