Francis Ngiri is at his farm when I visited, he is a farmer from makongo, Kiptagwanyi area in Nakuru County. He is a member of makongo farmer’s network group, one of the groups managed by Seed Savers Network.
He started saving seeds in 2014 where he was saving seeds that were common to other farmers such local beans, maize,vegetable,,sorghum among others. Francis is a role model to other farmers in his group since he has been able
to save huge amount of seeds in their seed bank, for example 90 kg of red kidney beans, red sorghum 45 kg, 30 glasses of black night shade and many more .Being a leader of makongo farmers network group he attends different seminars and trainings organized by seed savers network on farming .
During one of the training in November last year,a diverse seed competition organized by PELUM-Kenya, ,he was
able to interact with other farmers at a different level where they exchanged, loaned and shared seeds among
themselves. To him, this was a great opportunity since he exchanged 500gs of thorn melon seeds for 500g hibiscus seeds. Through the knowledge he had in seed saving, he went on and multiplied the seeds which gave him bumper harvest even during hash climatic conditions in the area. He is currently giving other group members these seeds to benefit from seed saving initiative. He has enough for planting in an acre.seed savers network has already secured market for these crop which will boost their income and seed saving efforts.