Despite all its success, this whole wonderful milk business was under threat. The government here, as in so many countries, decided that small-scale farmers and traders couldn’t supply milk as safely as large farms and dairies. So, how come the hawkers are still in business, as are the smallholder dairy farmers whose milk they sell?

Kenya has three million improved dairy cattle [recalculated in August 2006 to have risen to 6.7 million] - that’s the largest dairy herd in Africa - and most of them are on small farms.Almost half the three billion litres of milk they produce are sold direct from small farms to households nearby. So the question is, can smallholder farmers produce clean, safe milk? Research by ILRI and others says yes - and changed lives because of it.

But what about that other all-important business criteria: efficiency; are the smallholder dairy farmers here in Kenya efficient? Steve Staal, agricultural economist at ILRI, says research shows smallholder dairy farmers are actually very competitive. ‘Indeed, small-scale mixed crop-and-livestock production is likely to be a more sustainable way to intensify agricultural production in environmental terms than large-scale industrial livestock production’, says Staal.

The biggest threat to smallholders came a few years ago when the one big buyer in Kenya - The Kenya Cooperative Creameries - went bust. Government policies did not recognize the small-scale operators and thus they were deemed to be operating illegally. Amos Omore is part of the team at ILRI trying to boost dairy incomes for the poor. He remembers how big dairy business was not going to let Kenya’s 800,000 [1.8 million] new milk entrepreneurs get in their way. It was a clash between big and small.

Kenya’s official ban on milk hawking was based on the milk not being safe. The nation’s newspapers carried many such stories. In the face of this scare-mongering, researchers got researching. David Mwangi at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), says that the public health risks being talked about were minimal - ‘almost not there’.On average, Kenyans drink 100 litres of milk a year, [recalculated in August 2006 to be 144–152 litres of milk a year] making them among the highest milk consumers in the developing world. But they don’t drink milk as it comes. ILRI’s Omore says the research showed that most consumers boil fresh milk before drinking it, which makes it as safe as pasteurized milk.

Gathering this evidence was a huge step. Using that evidence to change policy and mindsets was another.
KARI’s Mwangi says, ‘We worked with advocacy groups and hosted a high-profile meeting. And we had facts to table there.’ This research helped lead to the Kenya Dairy Board approving training for smallholder milk producers and traders. That’s important: most members of smallholder dairy cooperatives depend on their milk money to educate their children. Furthermore, easing restrictions against small traders helps poor customers because of the price of processed milk is beyond the means of most poor people here.’

John Kutwa, a former ILRI technician in the dairy team, says that ‘small’ characterizes most of Kenya’s milk business. ‘It’s small farmers selling to small traders and processors who deliver to small (poor) consumers.’
ILRI’s Amos Omore has been battling on behalf of smallholder milk producers and sellers since their troubles began. And he’s battling still. ‘Right now the policy environment has shifted towards small-scale traders’ he says. But the change is not yet complete. Small businesses are important but often overlooked.

‘Changing policies takes time’, he says, ‘and so does changing attitudes. In this country in the 1960s and 70s, it was always assumed that development projects should be “mega” to achieve some quantum leap in development. But if you look at development holistically - in terms of employment, in terms of nutrition, in terms of cash flow - these are the stepping stones that allow people to move from one living standard to the next. Small is beautiful! Small should not be sacrificed at the altar of large-scale businesses that often fail.’