Iviani Farm believes that by offering continuous technical support and ensuring reliable market access, smallholder farmers can sustainably improve their income and enhance nutritional outcomes, driving long-term economic and community well-being.
Fruits and vegetables are highly perishable, and their quality deteriorates rapidly after harvest. They are also susceptible to pest infestation and decay, causing post-harvest losses due to a lack of proper post-harvest practices. They have a short shelf life (4-7 days) and are vulnerable to environmental stress. As a result, an estimated 50 – 80% of fresh produce is lost every year during harvesting, transport, and marketing. In addition, post-harvest losses force farmers to sell their produce to brokers/ middlemen and other buyers at the lowest prices available. As such, post-harvest losses represent a waste of the resources – land, labor, agrochemicals, water, fertilizer, etc. that went into production.
In addition, fruits (especially mangoes) ripen within a very short time window (between December and February), resulting in a very high surplus in the fresh produce market. Lastly, unscrupulous brokers take advantage of the situation and offer farmers very low prices that cannot cover production costs.
We partner with farmers to provide ongoing technical support and guarantee offtake of their fresh farm produce. We then utilize our fruit and vegetable value addition factory to extends the shelf life of fresh produce from just a few days (4-7 days) to more than 24 months.
Iviani Farm purchases fresh farm produce (such as mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and leafy vegetables) from farmers and processes them into dried products. This value-addition solution creates predictability, increases value, and creates an opportunity for strategic market entry leading to a sustainable income-generating model for local farmers. It increases the value of the produce by up to 7x and reduces post-harvest losses from the current 50-80% down to 8% or less.
The drying machine utilizes agro-biomass crop waste (such as maize cobs, nutshells, mango prunings, baobab husks, and bagasse) as fuel to generate 10kW of three-phase electricity or 12kW of mechanical power and 40kW of thermal energy that is used as electricity and steam to dry the fresh produce and achieve uniform drying within a short period of time. The machine can dry 1,000kgs of fresh produce within 12 hours.
The on-farm fresh produce processing provides farmers with a readily available market where they can sell their fresh farm produce for value addition. This removes the uncertainty of finding a market. We are located among the very farmers that we source produce from. This helps shorten the supply chain and ensures that farmers can have direct and guaranteed access to a market that is just a few kilometers from their farm.
Iviani Farm purchases mangoes at least at Ksh. 20 per kilogram at the farm gate, a price that is 3-4x above the price (Ksh. 5) that most brokers offer. In addition, our farm gate price is (50-100%) higher than export buyers who purchase mangoes at Ksh. 10 per piece ( this equates to Ksh. 10 – 15 per kilogram as one mango can weigh between 0.75kg to 1.2kg). As such, farmers make higher income from their fresh produce, which helps them improve their standards of living.
Iviani Farm creates >20 jobs, with >80% of the jobs going to women and >50% going to youth. Inside the dry hub, twelve women are trained and employed to support the drying process. This includes\sorting, grading, peeling, slicing, and drying. Other employees (mainly youth) help with sourcing fruits from the farm and operating the machine. In addition, the farm offers a ~50% wage premium compared to other casual jobs available within the area.
