The KSh 84B gap between KNBS and the Atlas — and what it means

Farmgate value is the price a farmer receives at the gate of the farm — before any processing, transport, grading or trader margin is added. Multiplying that price by national production for each commodity gives a like-for-like measure of how much income the rural economy actually earns from growing or rearing it, stripped of the downstream value that accrues to millers, exporters and retailers.

That distinction matters in Kenya, where the gap between farmgate and retail price is unusually wide for some commodities and narrow for others. A crop can dominate supermarket shelves or export manifests yet contribute modestly at the farm gate, while a quieter staple can anchor millions of household budgets. Ranking commodities this way reframes the question from "what does Kenya sell?" to "what actually pays the farmer?"

The chart ranks Kenya's main agricultural commodities by total farmgate value for the 2023/24 season, built bottom-up from production volumes and farm-level prices in the SAFIC Knowledge Base reconstruction. It is the single clearest picture of where agricultural income concentrates — and the foundation every other chapter in the Atlas builds on.