Kenya: WPC 2026 Farmers Field Day on course to draw more than 1,500 growers

Demonstration plots are already in the ground at FreshCrop in Mau Narok, where the World Potato Congress 2026 Farmers Field Day will be held on Thursday 29 October. Organisers expect the event to bring together more than 1,500 Kenyan growers alongside congress delegates travelling from across the global potato sector.

The field day falls on the congress’s technical tour day. WPC 2026 itself runs from 26 to 30 October at Sawela Lodges & Convention Centre in Naivasha, in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.

Plots planted and managed through the season

The most substantive element of the announcement is not the attendance projection but the agronomic groundwork. Demonstration plots have already been planted, and participating companies are managing the crops jointly with FreshCrop’s agronomy team across the full growing season.

That matters for what visitors will actually see. Rather than a trade stand exercise, the field day will present standing crops grown under defined input and management programmes, allowing side-by-side comparison between plots at a common stage of development. For a field day of this scale, in-season co-management by suppliers and the host farm’s agronomists is the difference between a demonstration and a display.

Four demonstration streams

The plot programme covers:

• varieties and seed;
• crop nutrition and crop protection programmes;
• machinery and equipment;
• precision agriculture and digital crop management.

Alongside the plots, organisers have scheduled practical talks and in-field demonstrations, together with structured opportunities for growers and delegates to meet the companies and specialists involved.

A dedicated Farmers Field Day webpage has been launched and will carry updates through to the event, covering crop development, participating partners, plot content, grower mobilisation and logistics.

Host and venue

WPC 2026 is co-hosted by the National Potato Council of Kenya (NPCK) and FreshCrop Limited. FreshCrop operates a hub-site model serving around 15,000 smallholder farms with certified seed, crop protection products and fertiliser, mechanisation services, finance linkages and market access. The company received Kenya’s national presidential farmers award in 2023.

FreshCrop’s own annual field days have an established track record in the region, and the WPC-linked event builds directly on that infrastructure rather than creating a new one — which is part of why the plots could be committed to the ground this far ahead.

First congress in Sub-Saharan Africa

WPC 2026 is the first World Potato Congress to be held in Sub-Saharan Africa in the event’s thirty-plus year history. Organisers anticipate more than 1,000 delegates from over 60 countries.

The full programme and international speaker line-up have been published. Themes span seed systems, genetics and variety development, crop protection, climate resilience, soil and water management, digital and mechanised production, processing, trade, and sustainable food systems. Organisers report a continuing expansion of the sponsor and exhibitor base, drawing companies from Kenya, the wider African continent and international markets, alongside rising international registrations.

The commercial read

For international suppliers, the field day is the part of the week with the clearest commercial logic. Congress sessions reach delegates; a demonstration programme in front of 1,500 growers in a single day reaches buyers.

East Africa’s binding constraint on potato yields is seed. Certified seed uptake across the region remains low, and it limits output more decisively than agronomy or crop protection do. A demonstration programme that puts varieties and seed alongside nutrition, protection, machinery and precision tools — in the same field, in the same season — addresses that constraint in the format growers are most likely to act on.

Whether the approach converts into commercial uptake will only be measurable after the season. That assessment is editorial; organisers have made no such claim.

---

Notes on the figures. The projection of more than 1,500 Kenyan growers is the organisers’ September 2026 estimate and refers specifically to local farmers; international delegates are counted separately. Some secondary coverage has merged the two categories, producing a different reading. Congress dates of 26–30 October are confirmed by organiser releases and the registration page; at the time of writing, PotatoPro’s own events calendar displayed a different date range, which appears to be a platform error. Certified seed uptake in East Africa is given here as sector context and does not appear in the source release.

Source: World Potato Congress Inc. press release (published by PotatoPro, 10 September 2026); potatocongress.org, wpc2026kenya.com.