Sokopepe issue 3: Farm records for improved productivity

By Bob Aston

We are pleased to present issue 3 of Sokopepe Newsletter. The issue is a joint effort between Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN) and Sokopepe Ltd.

The end of March 2017 marked the end of a successful roll-out phase of the Farm Records Management Information System (FARMIS) innovation by Sokopepe Ltd in the nine Sub Counties of Meru. This followed a pilot phase in five sub counties in Meru in 2014-2015.

Sokopepe issue 3 newsletter

The past 11 months has proven that farmer-serving agencies are able to leverage on the digital record-keeping platform to reach farmers with various services and products.

Our supportive farmers during the roll-out phase made us appreciate that farm records could transform their lives. It has been a humbling experience hearing and seeing the various micro-innovations that they undertake.

Our networks of Production Information Agents (PIAs) have played a pivotal role in ensuring successful completion of the roll-out phase of FARMIS innovation. Providing record keeping data, demand-driven extension services, boosting farmers’ access to information through the PIAs has helped many farmers to realise increased productivity and profitability.

More farmers are now able to use the record keeping data to know which crops are more profitable. This is helping them to make right farming decisions, as they are able to know the crops that are “eating” into their profits.

We are now working to ensure that we launch our second Agriculture Production Report (APR) next month. We hope that through the report, the government and other agencies would be able to obtain reliable, regular, and high-quality data on the status of agriculture in Meru County.

We hope that the aggregated FARMIS data will help to identify trends, which will support appropriate decision-making, while the farm level data will continue to determine the credit worthiness of farmers.

It is our hope that readers will find the third issue of Sokopepe Newsletter as informative and that it would give them a deeper understanding of what we are doing. You can download a copy of the newsletter here.