A portable mini-ginnery is helping Kenyan farmers earn more from cotton

For the last eight years, June to July marked a familiar routine for Joseph Nyaga, a cotton farmer in Kanyuambora village, Mbeere North Sub-county, Embu County, Eastern Kenya.

These are the months he has been harvesting his cotton. Once harvested, he would pack it in sacks, waiting for commercial ginneries to arrive and buy the produce.

The buyers would come around October. That meant about five months of storing the harvest, exposing it to pests, moisture, quality deterioration, and price uncertainty.

“The wait often came at a cost. The rats, the biggest enemy of cotton, would eat into the cotton, reducing both the quantity and quality of the harvest. By the time buyers arrived, I used to have little bargaining power and was forced to accept whatever price they offered,” says Nyaga, who leads the Mbeere North Cotton Cooperative Society which has more than 50 members.

According to the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) Yearbook of Statistics 2025, Kenya’s cotton industry remains significantly underdeveloped despite its strategic importance to the country’s textile and apparel sector.

In 2023, the country produced just 3,863 metric tonnes of seed cotton from 12,152 hectares, involving about 30,000 farming households. The sector generated an estimated Sh310 million from lint and Sh 231 million from cotton seed in 2023, highlighting its relatively small but important contribution to rural livelihoods, employment and the textile value chain.

An African Journal of Biotechnology research estimates that the country could cultivate as much as 385,000 hectares of cotton and produce up to 220,000 metric tonnes of seed cotton annually, benefiting up to 200,000 farming households.

Seeking to realise this potential, the Kenyan government has identified cotton as a priority value chain under its Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (2022–2027).

Its plans include expanding the area under cultivation, improving productivity and farmers’ incomes, modernising ginneries, widening access to quality seed and agricultural support, and attracting investment in local processing and manufacturing.

The broader aim is to make Kenya’s cotton-to-clothing industry more competitive in regional and global markets.

For farmers such as Nyaga, the shift to Bt cotton offers an early indication of what higher productivity could mean for household incomes. Bt cotton is genetically modified to resist one of the most destructive pests known as bollworms, helping to reduce crop losses and potentially the need for insecticide spraying.

On his one-acre farm, Nyaga says he previously harvested about 300 kilograms of conventional cotton, which sold for KSh50 (US$0.39) a kilogram. Since adopting Bt cotton, his harvest has risen to about 800 kilograms, while the price has increased to KSh72 (US$0.56) a kilogram. This would raise his gross earnings from about KSh15,000 (US$116) to KSh57,600 (US$445) per harvest, before production costs.

And now he has also reduced the long wait between harvesting and selling. Instead of storing his cotton for months, Nyaga can now process it soon after harvest using a micro-ginnery developed by Kirinyaga University, about 115 kilometers northeast of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, and provided to him and members of his cooperative at no cost.

Dr. Denis Muchangi, one of the researchers behind this innovation, says that they decided to come up with this machine after realising that a limited number of operational ginneries is one of the factors behind the decline of Kenya’s cotton industry, alongside low farm- gate prices.

He notes that only five ginneries are operational in different areas yet cotton grows in more than 27 counties. Because of this, some farmers are forced to travel up to 400 kilometers to sell their produce.

“When we did our research on why Kenya’s once-thriving cotton industry has declined, we learned that many farmers abandoned the crop because the returns no longer justified the cost of production. Farmers could only sell seed cotton/raw cotton, which was attracting low prices,” says Dr. Muchangi.

Apart from that, many of the ginneries that previously served cotton-growing areas had shut down because they were too expensive to operate, leaving farmers with nowhere to sell their produce.

These findings inspired the development of the low-cost micro ginnery, which allows farmers to process cotton near the point of harvest, adding value immediately after harvest instead of waiting for commercial ginneries.

The machine, which according to Dr. Muchangi can process about 500 kgs of raw cotton per day, weighs about 50 kgs. It separates cotton lint from the seed right on the farm, allowing each product to be sold separately and earn significantly more from the same harvest.

“Today, I earn about Sh260 for every kilo of lint while the cotton seed fetches Sh35 per kilo. For every three kilos of seed cotton, I get one kilo of lint and 2kilos of seeds,” says Nyaga, who has two of these machines for the cooperative.

The machine is accompanied by a small-scale oil extraction unit that enables farmers to extract oil from the cotton seed, adding another layer of value to the process. The inclusion of seed oil extraction capabilities not only adds value to the cotton farming process but also opens up new opportunities for farmers to diversify their products, increase profitability, and contribute to local economic development.

However, while the machine is capable of extracting the oil, Nyaga is not doing so because oil from cotton seed must be refined before it is safe for human consumption, and he doesn’t have that capacity.

“Despite this reality, I have not left the oil extracting machine idle. I use it to extract oil from sunflower seeds, which are also grown in this area. Mostly I extract oil for own consumption,” says Nyaga.

According to Dr. Muchangi, one major advantage of this machine is that it is affordable since it is fabricated locally. Secondly, it is portable, thus it can be transported from one farm to another. The machine is also easy to operate and requires minimal technical training, making it suitable for use by individual farmers, farmer groups and cooperatives.

The researchers believe that this innovation could become the first step towards reviving Kenya’s cotton industry. The reason is that it reduces post-harvest losses, increases farmers’ earnings, and it is making value addition more accessible to smallholder producers.

“So far we have given out 10 machines that are serving 200 farmers in Mwea and Mbeere. We now want to scale up the innovation to all cotton-growing areas in the country,” he said.

According to him, localising the cotton ginning process has enabled farmers to earn directly from the added value of the process, reducing cotton waste and decreasing related costs (such as costs related to storage and transportation). It has also increased their capacity to sell their produce at more advantageous prices.

Apart from enhancing farmers’ economic prospects, this innovation has also strengthened the resilience of the local cotton industry, paving the way for a more sustainable and prosperous future.

“The innovation has rekindled interest in cotton farming. Some farmers who had abandoned the crop in this area have returned to the crop after witnessing the increased earnings from on-farm value addition,” says Nyaga.

Despite its benefits, Dr. Muchangi says the objective of the project is not to undermine or eliminate existing ginneries, but rather to ensure that farmers receive fair compensation for their hard work.

He revealed that Kenya’s next industrial revolution will not begin in industrial parks. It will begin where value is first created, and that is on farms, in rural communities and inside decentralized processing systems that keep wealth closer to the people who produce it.

“Industrialisation is no longer about building bigger factories. It is about building smarter, more distributed value chains that empower farmers, strengthen local enterprises, create dignified jobs and produce globally competitive brands,” he said.

Nyaga reveals that, though the machines are on his farms, he is not the only beneficiary. All members of the Mbeere North Cotton Cooperative Society (more than 50 members) where he is a leader, are benefiting.

Members are allowed to take their raw cotton for processing. Once processed, they sell the different products collectively. The cotton lint is marketed to textile manufacturers, while the cotton seed is sold to animal feed manufacturers.

The benefits of the mini ginnery are also being felt beyond the farms, extending to local textile manufacturers. The cotton lint produced by the micro ginnery is sent to specialized spinning facilities, where it is converted into cotton yarn. The yarn is then supplied to local artisans who use it to weave shawls and other cotton products.

“Access to locally produced cotton lint has made it easier to source raw materials while strengthening linkages between cotton farmers and the textile industry.

Instead of relying entirely on cotton processed elsewhere, we are now using locally produced fibre to make our shawls,” says Rudia Muthoni Njeru, one of the local artisans who weaves the shawls at a nearby textile workshop.

She challenged the researchers to go a step further and develop a small-scale spinning machine that can be used at the community or farm level. Such a technology, according to her, would enable cotton-growing communities to convert lint into yarn locally instead of outsourcing spinning, allowing them to retain more value within the community.

“Having a spinner at the community level will ensure that a larger part of the value chain is completed here. This will create more jobs, reduce production costs and ensure that farmers and local manufacturers benefit from every stage of cotton processing,” says Muthoni Njeru.