"On the right track": Zachary Kibiri on the successes and struggles of the Lari Cooperative

The day starts early – usually around 5:30am – for Zachary Kibiri. As the sun rises, the Kenyan farmer milks his cows for the first time (they will be milked twice more during the day) and then takes the fresh milk to a newly built cold room, run by the Lari Horticultural Farmers’ Cooperative Society.

Without cooling, Zachary said, his milk would begin to spoil within hours. So would the broccoli, peppers, green beans and spinach grown by farmers including Zachary across Lari, a small sub-county just north of Nairobi. In the past, this has left farmers scrambling to sell their produce quickly after harvest, often accepting rock-bottom prices that hardly reflect their efforts. But now, the creation of a cold room – and the cooperative that runs it – allows farmers to keep their produce fresh for far longer, granting access to larger markets that offer fairer prices.

Aside from managing his own 11-hectare farm, Zachary is also the chairman of the Lari Cooperative, which was established in March 2025 with the help of the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) and the African Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold Chain (ACES).

When Zachary first heard that ACES and ACTS were looking for somewhere to test strategies for reducing post-harvest losses, he was certain that Lari was the perfect place. He explained: "Due to the poor road network, it was very difficult for the produce to be taken into urban markets, so it was only sold within the local areas where everybody is growing the same produce. Farmers were losing 50 percent or more of their produce, especially during the rainy season."

A group of farmers including Zachary approached ACTS. "They visited a number of farmers, and they found that it was as we had explained," he said. ACTS and ACES provided the new cooperative with cold-chain equipment that they can use for a year before paying, to test whether it helps the farmers.

After seven months, Zachary said, the benefits are already clear: where farmers used to receive around 20 Kenyan Shillings (£0.12) for a cabbage in the local market, the cooperative can sell them for around 60 Shillings (£0.35). Other vegetables see similar, if not greater, increases.

"We started with about 15 to 20 farmers, but others joined after they saw that there was a better return on produce marketed through the cooperative," Zachary said. "Currently, we have about 200 farmers, and more who are interested in joining."

At first, convincing farmers to join proved somewhat challenging: "We have farmers who were cheated by organisations who had approached them and instructed them to grow various crops," Zachary recalled. "When the crops were ready, they never bought them – so the farmers were a bit reluctant to join the cooperative."

Another challenge was that the cooperative took 15 days to pay farmers, whereas payment in the open market was instant. Zachary added: "The issue was trust. Even though we were paying better prices, they were not sure whether we would pay them."

By convincing members to open bank accounts with the same bank, Zachary said, the cooperative halved the time taken to process payments and also "empowered the farmers to be able to get soft loans to help transform their farming." As a result, farmers in the cooperative have been able to start shifting towards growing higher value crops, like tomatoes and bell peppers, which require greenhouses and irrigation systems. Building these should also allow farmers to grow produce throughout the year, ensuring a more consistent supply.

A continuing challenge for the cooperative has been how to collect produce from farms spread out across the region. "We only have one pickup and one truck," Zachary explained, "so we have to plan well to collect from a certain area on one day, and another region the next day." He added that in time the cooperative hopes to grow its fleet of vehicles.

Zachary said the cooperative also tries to educate farmers. "Our farmers were not well informed about practices, especially the safe use of chemicals," he said. "We have formed clusters of 10 farmers, and every cluster has an extension officer who is advising the farmers how to grow and manage the crop, how to spray, how to use the spring system, how to use good chemicals, and how to respect the post-harvest intervals, so that we can have minimal or no waste within the produce we are marketing."

One big area of education is climate change, Zachary said: "We are dealing with ordinary farmers who may not have enough information about their carbon emissions and how to handle them, so we are trying to educate our farmers and show them how to reduce carbon emissions."

This has involved demonstrating how decomposing produce that wasn’t sold in time releases greenhouse gases, as well as how planting fruit trees around farms can help absorb some emissions.

Looking forward, Zachary is focused on value addition and increasing collections. Currently, he said, the cooperative only has the capacity to take 20-30 percent of a farmer’s production, with the rest still being sold on the open market. "We expect to keep increasing our collection gradually to 40-50 percent," he added. An important step will be providing methods of value addition, such as machines which can chop and mix vegetables, allowing the cooperative to break into bigger markets that will take more produce from farmers.

The cooperative is currently undergoing a financial audit, which Zachary hopes will show that their business model is working correctly. "There has been much improvement since we started," he said. "I believe we are on the right track."