Amiran seeks to engage more youth into farming

Amiran Kenya has launched a pocket friendly farming kit tailored to encourage the youth embrace farming through a campaign dubbed ‘farming is cool’.

The kit, Amiran Foundation Kit, costs a total of Sh14,500 and comes complete with a 250 litre water tank, a 90m2 drip kit, one litre sprayer, eco-friendly agro-chemicals, hybrid seeds, fertilizers and a growing guideline.

With the open field kit farmers can grow their choice of crops ranging from tomatoes, kales, spinach, onions, cabbages, watermelons to traditional crops.

The inventor of the kit and Amiran Kenya Ltd deputy managing director Yariv Kedar says that the aim of the kit is to propel Kenya forward by empowering and engaging the youth in agriculture on small pieces of land. The kit size is reasonable and production is relatively high.

“This technology is beautiful and affordable. To go up the ladder you start from the foundation,” said Kedar during the launch at the 2013 Nairobi International Trade Fair.

Anchored on Amiran’s three pillars of success and sustainable agribusiness of knowledge, know-how and high quality inputs, the young farmers can make enough money after a few seasons to graduate to other Amiran technologies which require more land and definitely assures more proceeds.

“The beauty about it is that we train the youth who in turn become our ambassadors out there by training and encouraging others to embrace farming,” he adds.

Israel Ambassador to Kenya Gil Hanskel who launched the kit says that due to its affordability and proper farm management this kit can ensure that all households in Kenya can engage in profitable agribusiness and even become exporters.

“Every household in Kenya can acquire one and recover the initial investment in just one season and take this country where it deserves in being the bread basket of Africa,” he says.

With this kit, farmers are now able to grow all year round and experience high yields while still conserving an important environmental resource, water, ensuring that every drop counts through the drip pipes which deliver water directly to the root of the plant, saving between 30 to 60 percent of water as compared to other modes of irrigation.

“The invention of Amiran Foundation Kit makes farming not only cool but affordable too,” says Hanskel.

And to attract the attention of the youth under the ‘farming is cool’ campaign, Amiran has engaged the services of a local musician Julius Owino going by the stage name ‘Juliani’ as the Amiran Poverty Eradication Ambassador.

Juliani has been visiting schools and communities to create interest in agribusiness among the youth and present it in a hype and modern way.

They have also introduced a competition titled ‘farming is cool internship competition’ which brought together more than 30 youths with no agricultural background. The youths were trained by the company on modern technologies and they will compete with two of them will win a paid internship positions at Amiran for six months in an area suited to the talents displayed. After the completion of the six month internship the company may offer a permanent employment to them.

Amiran other kits includes, Amiran Farmers Kit, Family Drip System, Amiran Enterprise Kit, Amiran Organic Kit and Amiran One Acre Kit all offering higher profit margins.

By Ann Ndung’u