Moringa to support Kenyan farmers health & wealth

INTRODUCTION

Greetings from DNRC family and her farmers. We hope you and yours are all well. We are delighted to share with you this progress report as we say thank again you for your kind continuous support. With Covid challenges subsiding in the country, DNRC staff continued to normalize our programs as we work with 800 farmers and 12 schools. Due to Covid pandemic, the demand for moringa products continued to increase as the need for more nutrition increased. During this reporting quarter; our sales of moringa power to local market increased to about 30kg of moringa powder per month. Our international market for our moringa seeds which is about 1000kg every other 3 months also normalized. Both increase in moringa powder and moringa seeds made more sales from our farmers who aggregate both moringa leaves and seeds and sale for income. This diversity in livelihoods is ensuring resilience of our smallholder farmers we serve in the drylands of Kenya. During this reporting period, we concentrated our activities mainly in propagating more moringa seedlings which were issued during this March-April rains. We also trained and did close follows of our farmers on Moringa tree management. DNRC training and outreach staff were also busy aggregating moringa seeds for our international order. Below are detailed activities during the reporting quarter

MORINGA POWDER PROCESSING

During this reporting quarter, we sourced moringa leaves from the farmers, dried them under shade and hand processed them using motor and kiln. We processed about 30 kg of moringa leave powder during the quarter. DNRC continued to sell the processed moringa leave powder for income for both farmers and DNRC sustainability.

MORINGA SEEDS SOURCING

This is a continuous activity as we source moringa seeds from our farmers and surrounding community for our international market as mentioned earlier. During this reporting period, we had a running order and we managed to source 1000kg for the external market. This is very important market for our moringa market which was God sent as now our farmers and DNRC can generate income for resilience and livelihood diversification from regenerative enterprise.

FOLLOW UPS AND TRAININGS

During this reporting quarter, we resumed our group trainings as covid health protocols were eased. We were able to visit and train our 15 farmers groups and trained them on moringa management. Also our staff followed up some farmers to their individual farms and advised accordingly.

CHALLENGES

• Limited market for our moringa products
• Reduced funding resources to increase the number of farmers we are serving

FOCUS FOR THE NEXT QUARTER

• Continue drying more moringa leaves and processing to the powder
• Continue sourcing more moringa seeds for the new order
• Farmer follow ups and trainings