Four years ago, Njeru Kamuru nearly quit dairy farming. But when he learned that a solar-powered milk-cooling plant was to be built in his village, he changed his mind.

Before then, Kamuru said, he struggled to sell more than a half of the 12 litres that his milking herd produced in a day.

Selling those six litres earned him about Sh100; the rest of the milk went to his relatives on credit or was drunk by his wife and four children.

Breaking even was hard, he said, with the key problem a lack of refrigerated storage.

“I could spend the whole day at the farm waiting to sell milk to my fellow village customers,” said Kamuru.

And if the morning’s milk supply was difficult to sell - and it was - he was at least able to pasteurise it to ensure it did not go bad. The evening’s milk supply was trickier.

“If there were no customers, it all went to waste,” he said.

Others in the Kibumbu Dairy Farmers Association had the same problem, so they approached the governor of Tharaka Nithi County and demanded that he honours a 2012 campaign pledge to construct a milk cooling plant.

In 2015, the solar-powered facility opened its doors, having been constructed using county funds.

These days, Kamuru no longer sells milk to the villagers. His family consumes two litres a day, while the rest goes to the community-owned plant.

“The amount I deliver is recorded every day, and then I am paid at the end of the month,” he said.

Access 24/7

Farmers often struggle with unreliable electricity supply, with the problem particularly acute in rural areas.

Kibumbu’s solar cooler ensures that farmers like Kamuru can store their milk hygienically, day or night, without it going bad.

The timing is good: demand for dairy products is rising fast particularly in rapidly growing urban areas, according to the Kenya Livestock Producers Association (KLPA).

“This means that farmers must have access to storage facilities that work round the clock without interruption,” said Patrick Kimani, who heads the KLPA.

“Solar-powered milk coolers provide such a solution.”

Typically, local governments pay for milk-cooling plants, then hand over ownership to dairy associations, Tharaka Nithi County Governor Muthomi Njuki said in a phone interview.

It is then the responsibility of the farmers to pay for maintenance, Njuki added. The Tharaka Nithi facility does that by deducting 10 per cent of each farmer’s monthly earnings.

Apart from being community-owned, Kimani said, solar milk-cooling plants are cheap to maintain and are not affected by the blackouts that continue to hit the country.

Growing solution

Kimani said the country has about one million dairy farmers, but just 15 per cent can connect to the national electricity grid to refrigerate their milk.

Some of the rest rely on one of 50 solar cooling plants set up in 10 counties since 2014, Kimani said.

With the cost of solar technology coming down, he added, cooling plants will become increasingly affordable and will benefit Kenya’s 500-plus dairy associations.

With demand for dairy products rising, Kimani said, there are plans for plants in key production areas to boost their capacity to process milk into products such as yoghurt and milk powder.

At the office of the Kibumbu Dairy Farmers Association, manager Lucy Muthoni divides her day between monitoring the milk containers that farmers bring in, and checking that the solar system on the plant’s roof is keeping the coolers humming.

The plant receives more than 5,000 litres of milk a day, she said, with about a third consumed by people in nearby Chuka town and the rest sent to the capital, Nairobi, for processing.

Solar power and milk make for a good combination, she said.

“Milk is most likely to go bad when the day is hot. Yet it is when it is hot that the solar system can absorb and store more energy to keep the coolers operating during the day and at night,” Muthoni said.

And, she added, the fact that milk can be refrigerated means more local people are turning to dairy farming. The dairy industry is an important part of the country’s economy, worth about 3.5 percent of GDP, with about 2 million people directly or indirectly working in it.