A Busy Week but Despite Everything We Are Still Selling Seed

A lot of things have happened this week, I will try to cover them all

The word limited has been removed from the Farmers Own registration here in Kenya so that it is registered as a company limited by guarantee (ie a charity) and not as at present registered as a company limited by shares. We can now work with the Ministry and with the donors who have to know that FO is a charity according to its registered status here in Kenya.

ICCO is the Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation their mission is to work towards a world where poverty and injustice are no longer present. ( http://www.icco.nl). We are pleased to hear that ICCO will give some funding next year to assist our project, ICCO particularly like the fact that we have large numbers of farmers in our scheme.

The political situation here in Kenya is a bit difficult at the moment. There has been fighting in Kisumu and Kakamega and some deaths as a result of the opposing factions in the upcoming referendum on the new Kenyan constitution. The factions are either orange (against) or banana (for) and division on tribal and ethnic lines has occured. The worst fighting is in Western Province which is orange. We will not have FO staff in the area now until after the referendum (except Roman who is looking after the Kakamega office)). The referendum is on 21 Nov.
Despite this we are still selling sunflower seed to the three farmers groups that we are working with in Western Province. seed is still selling as rains are a bit late and erratic, seeds planted so far will be ready for harvest in January
Update on sunflower seed sales, seed sales so far (kg)
Abdi's group 95
Willis Wachilonga's group 100
Paul Mlulu's group 185

Mildred (our marketing officer who is in UK just now) will be going to meet ICCO in Netherlands along with Jim our CEO and Stephen our Company Secretary at a meeting on 12 December

We have an invitation to a workshop in Ethiopia at the end of January

We have an important meeting with Rockefeller next week to answer their questions, the questions are

* Outline of Farmers Own
* Organisation of FAAs
* Size of Markets
* Financial Planning for the FAAs
* Monitoring and Evaluation Plans
* ICCO Funding
* TSBF Discussions

We now have a report and power point presentation to address these points and I am meeting Dr Oluoch, Chairman of the Poverty Eradication Commission to discuss these as he has to present them to Dr Adesina of Rockefeller on Tuesday. I cannot present as I have to go back to the UK because my mother is seriously ill in hospital.

I will keep the blog going from UK for the next period