Macroeconomic and Sectoral Policy Level
· Government intervention in the market for major staple food crops, i.e. maize, should be made with due consideration to the effect on other crops.· The rural infrastructure investment programme should consider regions with a high potential of surplus production of root and tuber crops.
· Security of tenure is vital if farmers are to invest in their farms. Problems of insecurity of tenure and lack of title, as found in the Timau division, seriously hamper production efforts and unnecessarily impoverish farmers. Therefore, land tenure problems and issuing of title needs to be addressed.
· The government should not intervene with regulatory measures in the post-harvest operations without collaboration of the private sector. Market transparency is fairly well developed, even with the farm-households. Improvements, such as the standardisation of the packaging on a national scale, would be better achieved in a collaborative effort with the private sector than be enforced, as has been done in the Meru district.
· A similar approach may be taken in the provision of certified seed for potato. Since the state sector has proven ineffective in securing the provision of adequate potato seed, new opportunities for stimulating private sector engagement have to be found.
Promotion of Private Sector Development
The private sector should remain responsible for carrying out the operations in the post-harvest system. Private sector development could be supported by the following:
· Professional associations (producers' associations, traders' associations) can be formed to increase the position of actors from rural areas in the policy lobbying process.· Growing urbanisation, has led to a constant pressure on the available infrastructure. Wholesale market places have proved too small to cope with the steadily increasing marketing of agricultural produce. Bulky products such as root and tuber crops are especially hit by this constraint. Investment in wholesale market facilities should be thoroughly investigated with special regard to providing incentives for management by the private sector.
· Urban business enterprises of sweet potato processing should be supported.
Research-Extension System
· The research-extension-farmer-commerce system should recognise sweet potato as a growing commercialised crop. On-farm processing of sweet potato could form an additional income-generating activity where a constant supply of the raw product and demand of the processed product is secured.· It appears that sweet potato is an under-utilised resource where demand is limited by the stigma of poor man's food. Efforts should be made to introduce sweet potato flour into commonly sold commodities in order to create additional demand.
· The development of new potato and sweet potato varieties should consider the characteristics preferred by consumers.
Further Information Needs
It has remained unclear which position sweet potato will hold in the urban consumption pattern in future. The substitutive relationship to other food commodities has to be clarified in order to draw conclusions on future market demand. Analysis of food crop demand patterns by the use of time-series and cross-sectional data should be considered.
