Their love for soya beans is immense because their daily lives revolve around its production.
This couple from Bweya village in Vihiga County is passionate about soya beans.
To Job Osiako and his wife Josephine Ongoma who run Annapolis Wonder Enterprise (AWE), soya bean is a wonder grain legume.
They have decided to spread the good news to locals and several farmers have embraced soya beans farming.
AWE was established last year seeking different value chains related to culture, where soya bean is the main plant.
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Osiako and his wife run an open farm with soya bean as the flagship crop because they realised that through it, sustainable agriculture alongside defined value chain could be achieved with an aim of bringing their community into mainstream economic development.
Value chain
“We realised people from our local area are poor, not because they lack where to grow crops but because they invest in the wrong crops. We decided to plant and process soya beans so that they can learn the benefits and embrace it too,” says Ongoma, the project’s CEO.
They have created the soya bean value chain whereby they handle it from planting to processing all under one roof.
She says they have an Annapolis Soya bean seed farm which is used for production of soya beans under the arrangement of Western Seed Growers Association. The seeds are then sold to buyers for use in their soya bean endeavours.
“We grow soya beans for demonstrations to farmers both locally and internationally and for our own production,” she says.
From the soya bean, they produce and sell dark roasted soya beverage, crunches, soya enriched breads, scones and fresh soya milk. They have a bakery section where the soya enriched bread, scones, cakes, pizza and other confectioneries are produced.
Annapolis also has a livestock farm where they produce soya bean enriched meal rations for use in the rearing dairy cows and calves.
“We use soya bean enriched dry meal rations as feed for lactating cows which help in realising good milk yields. We sell the milk in fresh form, mala or yoghurt,” she says.
They also feed the calves born on the farm with the soya bean value added meal rations.
Apart from making edible products with soya beans, they also formulate layers and Kienyeji chicken feed to facilitate production of eggs. The main component is soya, which when added to the feeds help them resist weather discrepancies.
“We have about 200 layers that produce over 140 eggs per day. We buy their feed and add soya to it to increase the nutrients,” she says.
Osiako says they decided to begin a shop at their homestead to enable locals get value added products and necessary farm inputs for better yields.
“We have a one-stop shop in our home that provides farm inputs for production of soya beans like fertilisers, seeds and nitrogen fixers. We also sell farm produce from the Annapolis farm, value added products like cakes and bread and soya bean enriched poultry feeds formulated on the farm,” he says.
Currently they have 26 employees under the soya bean value chain and are supplying over 800 people with their products from soya beans.
“Demand for soya beans, bread and scones is overwhelming,” Osiako says.
These activities are done in a two and a half acres piece of land. According to Annapolis’ Programmes Coordinator Justin Omlando, nothing goes to waste in their farm.
Main challenge
Cow dung is used for compost making on the farm while urine from the dairy unit is diluted and used as fertiliser for the fodder and bananas on the farm.
Poultry droppings which are rich in uric acid are collected, dried and incorporated into cattle feed for use by the cows so as to help manufacture for them proteins.
Amid all these, AWE still finds time to provide capacity building services to farmers on soya bean agronomy, collation and utilisation.
They also provide marketing support to producers of soya beans and assist them in designing and packaging the products.
“This project is a source of food to us and our neighbours, source of income, source of employment and an example to Africans that this is a sustainable means of bringing rural communities into mainstream economic development,” Ongoma says.
Their main challenge is pathetic access road that leads to their homestead.
“Our request to relevant authorities is that they should make this road accessible,” he says.
This is, however, not the first time Ongoma is featuring in soya beans related activities.
She began production of soya beans products in 2006 when she started using a pressing machine to make soya milk. Instead of throwing away the waste, she also made soya munches out of them by adding natural spices like ginger and deep frying.
Osiako is a former Principal at Kenya Institute of Mass Communication while his wife is a food and nutrition graduate from the University of Nairobi and holds a post graduate Diploma in Sustainable Rural Development from the Xavier University in Canada.
Her decision to begin soya bean farming was when she rotated it with maize and she realised good yields.
“Currently, I also train farmers on all aspects of soya beans ranging from how to cultivate it and how to use it in the household or make sellable products out of it,” Ongoma concludes.
