Women sort potato seeds in Marioshoni, Molo, Nakuru County on December 9, 2024.
Nakuru has beaten Nyandarua as Kenya’s potato basket , producing one in every 3.5 tonnes of the crop in 2023, a new report reveals.
The national agriculture production report shows that Nakuru beats Nyandarua in all aspects of the crop’s output, from the size of land, number of households farming the crop as well as productivity.
In 2023, Nakuru produced 657,091 tonnes of potatoes beating Nyandarua which trailed at 437,748 tonnes, the report shows.
The pair led a list of four counties that have been revealed to produce more than two-thirds of potatoes, the report that shines a light on one of Kenya’s key staple foods, has shown.
Others are Elgeyo Marakwet which produced 259,252 tonnes of potatoes in 2023, and Meru (236,407 tonnes).
“Irish potatoes is one of the key staple crops in Kenya, which is grown in a wide range of conditions. In the period under review, production of Irish potatoes increased to 2,309.9 thousand tonnes from 1,831.8 thousand tonnes in 2022,” the national agriculture production report states.
The four counties harvested 1.59 million tonnes out of the total 2.3 million tonnes of potatoes in 2023, meaning that 10 out of every 14 tonnes of potatoes came from them.
Nakuru alone produced one out of every 3.5 tonnes of potatoes harvested in the country during the year, positioning itself as the leading potato basket.
The report shows that over the years, households in Nakuru have been increasing the size of land under potato farming even as farmers in Nyandarua fail to maintain a steady trend. In 2023, while 49,981 hectares of land were put under potatoes in Nakuru, Nyandarua managed 43,587 hectares.
This is a trend that has been observed from as back as six years ago when 140,998 households in Nakuru were involved in potato farming during the 2019 census, against 119,679 households in Nyandarua.
With a combined production of 1.59 million tonnes, the four top potato farming counties are Kenya’s potato basket and are supplying 68.8 per cent (10 out of every 14.5 tonnes) of potatoes to Kenyans, the report shows.
