Kibumbu — 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 Kenyan village, he changed his mind. Before, he said, he struggled to sell more than half of the 12l of milk his brace of cows gave during their morning and evening milking sessions. Selling those 6l earned him about a dollar; 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 from his Kibumbu village in central Kenya.
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 off. 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 Associat...
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