The fifth edition of the Youth in Agriculture Forum, hosted by Co-operative Bank of Kenya in Meru County, brought together young agripreneurs, industry experts, and development partners for a structured engagement around four of the region's most commercially active agricultural value chains: coffee, dairy, potatoes, and poultry, with the bank using the platform to make a deliberate argument that financial access alone is insufficient to drive sustainable agricultural growth among young farmers and that a broader ecosystem of technical support, market linkages, and strategic partnerships is what separates subsistence activity from scalable agribusiness.
The forum drew sector practitioners whose combined experience across Meru's dominant value chains gave participants direct exposure to the operational realities and commercial opportunities within each.
Duncan Marete, Chief Executive of the Meru Central Coffee Union, addressed the coffee value chain; Paul Kirimi, Chief Executive of Katheri Dairy FCS, covered the dairy segment; Kiome Kironya, Chairman of Meru Tamu Potato Farmers, spoke to the potato value chain; and Caroline Kanana, Veterinary Incharge at KENCHIC Meru, provided insights into the poultry sector, a lineup that reflected the breadth of Meru County's agricultural economy and the range of entry points available to young people seeking to build viable agribusinesses.
Meru County occupies a productive agricultural zone in Kenya's central highlands, with its elevation and rainfall patterns supporting a diverse crop and livestock base that includes some of the country's most commercially significant tea, coffee, and dairy production.
The county's agricultural output has historically been shaped by smallholder producers operating through cooperative structures, a context that makes Co-operative Bank's presence in the space structurally coherent given the bank's own cooperative ownership roots and its long-standing positioning as a primary financial partner to the cooperative sector.
The bank's framing of the forum as a response to a gap that finance alone cannot fill reflects a maturation in how development-oriented financial institutions think about agricultural growth.
Credit provision to smallholder farmers and agripreneurs, while necessary, tends to generate limited impact when it is not accompanied by agronomic advisory services, reliable market offtake arrangements, and connections to processing and storage infrastructure that allow farmers to capture more of the value their produce generates. Forums that bring practitioners, buyers, and technical experts into direct conversation with young farmers address precisely these non-financial constraints in a format that is both time-efficient and relationship-building.
The choice of Meru County as the venue for the fifth edition of the forum is consistent with the county's profile as a location where youth participation in commercial agriculture is both a demonstrated reality and an area of active investment by both public and private sector actors.
The coffee, dairy, potato, and poultry sectors that featured in the day's discussions are each characterised by relatively accessible entry points for young entrepreneurs, established cooperative and offtake structures, and growth trajectories that reward farmers who invest in quality improvement and market positioning.
Co-operative Bank's sustained hosting of the forum across five editions signals an institutional commitment that extends beyond a single event cycle, building a recurring engagement infrastructure through which the bank deepens relationships with the next generation of agricultural borrowers and cooperative members while contributing to the broader policy objective of making Kenyan agriculture a viable and attractive livelihood for young people who might otherwise seek employment in urban centres.
