New Kenya Cooperative Creameries posted a 65 per cent increase in milk delivered in the past one month.

The company's managing director, Mr Francis Mwangi, said farmers were now delivering about 350,000 litres of milk per day, up from about 210,000 litres per day earlier in the year.

Mr Mwangi attributed the 140,258 litres increase to the confidence farmers have in the new Government.

A lease of life

The industry was adversely affected during the post-election violence as many roads, especially in the North Rift, were blocked. At the time, some branches were collecting as little as 1,000 litres per day while their capacities are more than 100,000 litres.

The managing director said the opening of roads, which had been barricaded by youths disputing last years General Election results, had given the once vibrant creamery a lease of life in the northern region, which gives the creamery about 100,000 litres of milk daily.

"The region's potential is enormous. We want farmers to supply us with more milk since the dairy sector can improve one's economic earnings tremendously," Mr Mwangi said.

Meanwhile, the creamery has started interaction programmes between farmers from different regions. The programme is intended to help farmers live in harmony and improve earnings by learning from each other.

Raise output

Last week, 39 farmers from the North Rift visited Central Province in a bid to strengthen relations between the farmers and enhance national cohesion.

The chairman of North Rift farmers, Mr Joseph Sitienei, said they had learnt a lot from the tour and intended to raise their milk output from the knowledge.

"We saw farmers who have less than an acre in Central Province producing more than 500 litres of milk per day while we have huge chunks of land while we produce very little and we want to bank on what we learnt to increase production," said Mr Sitienei, who is currently producing 30 litres of milk a day.