Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA) is an Alliance of six agri-focused organizations whose operations are coordinated by the World Food Programme (WFP). In Kenya, FtMA’s operations began in July 2017, and currently covers thirteen (13) counties. The key value chains the program focuses on are Maize, Sorghum, Rice, and Irish potatoes, other smaller value chains of interest are Soya and Finger millet FtMA Kenya’s key objectives are to: Increase the productivity and income of smallholder farmers, develop self-sustaining Farmer Service Centres (FSCs), increase private investment and involvement in the smallholder food sector and develop evidence based documents on the FtMA model. The institute was contracted by WFP to undertake the evaluation of the FtMA project. The lead consultant is Dr Jackson Langat, Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation Officer. Training of data collection staff was undertaken at Agricultural Training Centre in Nakuru and thereafter the teams were dispatched to the field. Data collection is completed and the data management and analysis is ongoing and the evaluation report is due for submission by the 3rd week of December 2022.
Tegemeo Institute-Kenya, Michigan State University and Purdue University in the US are implementing a multi-year research project on “Support for Applied Research and Analysis in Kenya and East Africa Region. (SARA-KEA)”. The project supports development programming by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Kenya and East Africa Missions in the counties of focus in Kenya.One of the study topics in the project is to examine the role entrepreneurial investor farmers play in driving agricultural transformation in Kenya. The study team conducted a listing of all farm households in 40 selected villages in Kakamega and Kisumu counties. the activity was conducted from 20thto 31stOctober 2022. The household survey of sampled farmers will take place from mid-November through December 2022.