After felling a mature banana tree to access the edible fruit, many farmers in Kirinyaga County usually feed the stem to their cattle or discard it to decay in the farm.
Unknown to them, they have been losing out on earning some good money from the stem, which animal nutrition experts say has little nutritional benefits to the animals. This is, however, set to change after an organisation introduced a technology to extract fibre from banana stems and weave bags, mats, wall hangings and sanitary towels, among others items.
Already, banana farmers in several parts of the county are now earning around Sh60 for a medium sized stem from each banana tree after harvesting the bunch.
Through an arrangement with Integrated Community Organisation for Sustainable Empowerment and Education for Development (Icoseed), farmers in a locality form groups and between them produce at least 200 stems.
Icoseed has a machine to extract fibre from the stems and the two young men who man it move from place to place where the stems are ready.
They then take the stems from farmers, extract and dry the fibre then weigh it and buy at Sh20 per kilogramme.
Managing Director Patrick Muriuki said a large banana stem can yield about five kilogrammes.
“Instead of discarding a stem or feeding it to a cow, we advise farmers to get into groups and sell them to us. We only visit an area where we are assured of many stems and make payments on the spot,” he said.
The dried fiber is then used to make handbags and purses, sold at between Sh500 and Sh2,000 depending with size, wall hangings at Sh1,000, a set of table mats selling at between Sh300 and Sh1,000, large sized floor mats costing Sh3,000 and bed side mats for Sh1,500.
To make baskets, the banana fibre is twinned, coloured and put to hand looms in a process that employs 17 people directly and about 400 indirectly.
Muriuki said the firm has just one banana fibre extractor imported from India. He has approached Kenya Industrial Research Development Institute to prefabricate a similar machine at a lower cost.
“Once this happens, we will be in a position to have an extractor in every location. This will result in increased production hence adequate volumes of products made for sale in the international market,” he said.
