By Samuel | Published | 3 Comments
Are you wondering where to buy good quality planting seeds in Kenya? Thanks to technological advancements, you can now easily source farm inputs like seeds, pesticides and tools online. Another chance is to make direct orders from a seed company from their websites.
Why buy your seeds or seedlings online? The advantages of sourcing planting materials include;
To understand how to buy quality seeds online, here are three examples of how Kenyan farmers are selecting, shopping or checking seeds quality online.
In Kenya and Uganda, you can use various mobile apps or online seed selection websites to select the most suitable seeds for your farm. One of the best is the MbeguChoice, it is an online platform that assists users such as farmers, agrovets and extension workers to generate a list of the best planting seed varieties for your region.
You will need to choose your county, crop type, season and the desired crop attributes, such as drought tolerance, quick maturity, high yielding among others.
The site will give you a list of the best seeds and the seed companies that stock them. This way, you do not have to plant seeds that are unsuitable for your farm.
Since the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, most shoppers in Kenya prefer doing their shopping online. As a business, you will save on cost of busines while farmers can sacve their time and travelling costs to towns.
In addition to buying seeds from a seed company directly or a local agrovet, you can also order them from leading local and international Ecommerce sites like the Amazon, Kilimall, Copia and Jumia. Online shops give you a chance to compare, shop and order quality seeds. You can request to get the shipped or posted to your home address.
Incase the seeds are or unacceptable quality, most of the online shops have a payback policy. You can can get back your money if the seeds fail to germinate
If you are near Nairobi, Nakuru, Edoret or other major towns in Kenya, The list below gives you the best ecommerce sites to order your seeds online in Kenya.
The emerging practice among vegetable and herbs farmers in Kenya is sourcing for certified seedlings for sale instead of seeds. If you want to know where you can buy quality vegetable seedlings, do an online search for best seedling propagators near you. The following are some of the most popular seedlings sellers where you can order online and pay via Mpesa.
Use of anti-counterfeit labels by the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS), the government regulator responsible for the quality of agricultural inputs and production. Farmers can find scratch card labels in seed packages to assist in seed traceability and anti-counterfeiting. After scratching the card, the code revealed is sent to a given number from which the authenticity of seeds can be determined.
We hope this explainer on how to select quality seed varieties will be beneficial towards improving your farm profitability.
S.K is a senior agribusiness expert and agri-based and rural development consultant at Agcenture. He can be reached at info@agcenture.com
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[…] color, apply pesticides and pack them for sale to unsuspecting consumers. Ensure you buy from a KEPHIS registered seed company and farmers store to avoid this […]
Hi,this is good information for beginners in farming
i really appreciate
Edward
you are welcome Edward. Glad to be of service