What Went Wrong? Part 2

Since I like nuts and seeds, I recently wondered what could eventually happen when we reach a level of overconsuming seeds such as those of pumpkins seeing their increasing popularity especially among middle aged men in the country. Might we possibly reach a level where there are no more seeds for planting so that we can continue growing the delicious pumpkin fruits and getting more seeds?
Seeds and nuts happen to be not only delicious but also nutritious. Yet some such as walnuts, cashew nuts, almonds and brazilian nuts happen to be quite expensive (dear) particularly given that some have to be imported from as far as Brazil, USA and Turkey.
And despite being grown locally, cashew nuts are quite dear with reasons for this being that growing and processing the nuts to the shelves /market level is quite a laborious and taxing journey.
One, nevertheless, hopes that cashew nuts farmers finally get well compensated for their efforts .

Then thinking about the most common nuts in the country (peanuts or groundnuts), several issues come to mind…..
.. .the peanuts business employs scores, indeed hundreds, of small investors (SMEs) and traders including young men and women from our neighboring countries which they daily zealously hawk, in buckets and walking long distances.
However, majority of the peanuts roasters are women who roast, mostly from homes, and pack and seal in innovate ways. Many of them sell the packed peanuts in wholesale and retail basis supplying the products to most retail shops in Nairobi estates and periphery settlements.
The roasted & packed nuts have a shelf live of about five days after which they get stale and lose the nice fresh taste.

Recently, since I also like peanuts a lot and also use them as the best snack gift to friends and children instead of sweets, I bought a 50.00 bob packet so as to enjoy economies of scale. The packet contains very many nuts compared to a purchase of three 20.00 bob packets.

As a rule, I always break each nut into two after the realization that some of the nuts happen to be rotten and expose one to risks of indigestion & food poisoning or even aflatoxins. So when i settled and set out to munch the ever delicious nuts, I began to sort the bad ones from the healthy ones.
Notably, I realized that almost an eighth of the nuts were rotten.
When i later complained or rather gave feedback to the seller who literally roasts the nuts on location using a charcoal jiko and packs and sell at the same point, she told me that she had been unlucky to get a bag that contained rotten peanuts as a majority.
“Pole sana kastoma.. Watu wameteta sana.. Hiyo bag ilikuwa na njugu mbaya na nyingi zilikua zimeoza. Lakini hiyo bag imeisha na next time utapata njugu poa,” she explained.
“Hii Kenya yetu hakuna njugu siku hizi na mbei pia imepanda sana,” she added. “Siku hizi tunaambiwa eti njugu zinatoka mbali. Zingine kutoka Tanzania hadi Botswana na Rwanda,” she added. According to her, prices have risen to between k sh 320.00 & sh 350.00 per kg up from about sh 90.00 & sh120.00 three years ago.
To get access to the different varieties, I buy from two reliable investors. My other source, also a woman about a kilometer apart has also been lamenting over current difficulties in sourcing peanuts in Kenya.

“We are getting peanuts from outside Kenya and most of it is not of good quality. I’m very choosy to avoid rotten ones since I value my customers and I hate dismaying them,” she recently explained to me after I missed the small sized bright – brown groundnuts which are very delicious and my favorite.

Instead she had bigger peanuts that also appeared spotted.”Why are these peanuts spotty? Why don’t you have the smaller ones?” I inquired from her space, just next to a main road and from where she also sells roasted sim sim and boiled maize atop a charcoal stove (jiko).
“We’ve been told that the small – sized nuts have gone out of stock but that  new stock is expected soon. We hear that these spotted ones are from Ethiopia,” she explained. I then reflected and deduced that the spots were from worn out skin as the peanuts grind against each other during the laborious cooking. I understood, somehow, why the quality of the nuts has been a disturbing issue.

At times assessing already sealed bags of peanuts to check for rottenness could be difficult…
Upon hearing these observations, I further reflected and asked myself, “What Really Went Wrong,”…..

What has made Kenya an importer of peanuts which in yesteryears were harvested in great numbers in parts of western Kenya.
Perhaps our agronomists, our policy makers and agricultural officers need to go back to the farmers to check what could be amiss…
The factors contributing to the low production of groundnuts in Kenya leading to massive importation of the same need to be probed.
The prevalence of rotten peanuts and the risk of exposing consumers to aflotoxins must also be highlighted and probed.

The right assistance from agricultural extension officers and others including policy makers to groundnuts farmers must become urgently considered, i thought to myself in reflection