April 5,2019,Nairobi.After the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) set rules and tough measures to protect the fruit’s quality export, avocado export has been on increase with the country dominating to international markets. This comes at a time when the sector has been faced with many challenges with exporters exporting poor quality avocados that were immature and others affected by pests.
The Chinese visited the country late this month and are expected to visit again this month for quality inspection and certification and according to KEPHIS this will be a big boost to the sector and Kenya at large when the avocado export lands to the Chinese market.
Speaking during stakeholder’s fair and forum at Murang’a Univeristy of Technology, the Avocado Society of Kenya CEO, Ernest Muthomi said that international buyers are now importing more fruits after farmers adhered to the set measures by AFA. Antony Mureithi who is the AFA interim directed urged farmers to continue adhering to the rules during the stipulated harvest time for them to be able to protect the standards required for the markets.
“Our fruits have a unique taste making them be craved by customers,though we can only supply 4 percent with this underlining the unexplored potential and need by our farmers to increase the land under avocado farming in the country,” Mr. Muriithi explained.
It had been discovered that there before farmers were harvesting immature fruits that would later be rejected in the markets by buyers prompting AFA to raise alarm.
Kakuzi farm is one of the farms that have dominated to the international markets due to their high quality with last year having exported 600 containers of fruits out of the total 4,000 containers that were exported by all farms.
The farm is one of the farms that was set to be visited by the Chinese buyers for inspection on how the fruits are farmed and packaged which are requirements for the export market.