AGRIHACK LAUNCHED IN NAIROBI TO END POST HARVEST LOSS

The Rallying Cry in partnership with AIICRA, and Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT has this morning in a Nairobi hotel  launched Kenya AgriHack to develop innovative, climate smart, and gender-responsive solutions to reduce post-harvest losses in grain, dairy, and horticulture which amount to 30 percent loss translating to 75 Billion.

Speaking during the launch  of the AgriHack  Agriculture and livestock permanent secretary Jonathan Mweke has said the government is committed to ensure food security and ensuring harvest will not go to waste by transforming the agriculture sector.Currently 2.9 million Kenyans are unemployed and can be absorbed in the Agriculture sector if made attractive and appealing to the youths and draw them to pursue carriers in farming.

During the two day conference teams will compete for prizes and awards in categories ,1st place - USD 5,000, 2nd place - USD 3,000 and 3rd place - USD 2,000 in the event that brings together  agri-preneurs,agri-processors and agri-corporates, software developers, logistics experts, academics, government officials.This seeks to  address challenges in market linkages, knowledge gaps, lack of infrastructure, access to

finance, and supply chain. 

In a bid to reduce the post harvest losses in agriculture which pose a significant challenge for farmers as well as small and medium-sized

enterprises (SME) processors in developing countries occurring downstream, between the production and retail stages of the supply chain.This losses occur at every stage of the supply chain – from production to consumption. Mostly, any loss of produce translates to lost production resources, mainly land,water, energy and inputs prompting the government to install 350 milk coolers to ensure milk does not go bad and procurement of  dryers to farmers to ansure their produce is safe from toxins.