(1888PressRelease)
May 22, 2009 - East Africa is facing record high food prices and food shortages. Simultaneously, seven out of ten Africans earn their living by farming but continue to suffer from deficient value chains. Rachel Zedeck, Managing Director of Medea Group states that ”Kenya’s farmers must produce more food, but more importantly, they must have access to markets to sell their harvests at prices to benefit both the farmers and local consumers”. Zedeck announces that Medea Group has partnered with Irrico International and Lachlan Agriculture to complete the design of the Backpack Farm Program (BPF) / “Backpack”.
The concept is simple; a canvas backpack filled with seeds, agro inputs, tools and drip irrigation easily delivered and distributed in the most rural communities. More than an dynamic set of agricultural tools, the Backpack is a program which includes assessment, mobilization, training and monitoring to support the successful launch and expansion of local agriculture cooperatives or ‘clustering’s’. The technical inputs feature Irrico’s Maji-Pak drip irrigation system and Lachlan’s innovative plant nutrition system that ensures sustainability and nutrition density at reduced cost and weight, ensuring transportability. This agriculture system is capable of mirroring the top commercial food production models at a fraction of commercial costs.
Together, this program of agriculture inputs and hands on supervision empowers small landholders to develop their potential and outline new strategies opening up domestic and regional markets to rural farmers, while improving their livelihoods, and lowering food prices in urban centers. “We must start focusing on Africa’s existing assets to enable local food production which include small landholders. By leveraging the right knowledge and experience from commercial farms we can transfer the best of this existing knowledge to enable the small scale farmer to benefit and grow sustainably. Africa’s neglected farmers could directly impact the global food crisis.” ” Zedeck says.
Medea Group has signed a strategic alliance with Irrico International (www.irricointernational.com) and Lachlan Agriculture (www.griculture.co.ke) both Kenyan owned and operated firms. Zedeck comments, “each company is fully committed to educating and implementing environmentally intelligent farming that help Kenya’s small landholders exceed competitive expectations. We hope to expand this programming throughout the region playing our part to help feed Africa.”
The BPF is part of the “Suganic” (www.suganic.com) initiative, a non-political, non-religious, commercial initiative to ensure food autonomy and human security in Africa’s developing economies.
The Backpack concept will be rolled out to the rest of Africa in a phased 18 month program. Medea Group and its partners are committed to developing this model throughout the East Africa region and is committed to sharing its model with any group or organization interested in building a similar system.
For more information about Medea Group Limited and the Backpack Farm Program, please contact info ( @ ) medeagrp dot com
About Medea Group
Medea Group has been operating in Kenya since 2007 with a vision to empower commercial, governmental and non-profit organizations with unique knowledge to make critical decisions, leverage opportunities and minimize risk in post-conflict regions. The Medea team has leveraged their microfinance experience blended with research and analysis to launch the “Suganic” initiative a non-political, non-religious, commercial initiative supporting the design of responsible and sustainable AGRO based initiatives achieving food security, income generation, enhanced nutrition, human resources development (HRD) in East Africa’s developing economies.
About Lachlan Agriculture
Kenyan-onwed Lachlan Agriculture has been founded in 2000 and is a market leader providing crop protection and pest management in Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. Their corporate vision is to source and offer products and services to enable customers to minimize the use of the more ‘toxic’ synthetic pesticides.
About Irrico International
Irrico International, Kenyan owned and operating since 2001 working with the consultancy of irrigation design and installation, heating and misting systems and greenhouse projects.
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