Kiambu bank where farmers save endangered indigenous seeds

Samuel Nderitu has dedicated his career to helping farmers conserve indigenous seeds in his seed bank located in Muguga, Kiambu county.

He established the facility in 2013 after a visit to India where he saw how farmers embraced the culture of saving their own seeds.

“I think in the world, India is doing well in seeds preservation especially around the Himalayan mountains," Nderitu said.

"We need to emulate that and teach our farmers to save their own seeds and have simple structures as seeds banks."

He said it is important for farmers to preserve some of the indigenous seeds which can withstand the effects of climate change.

The executive director of the Grow Bio Intensive Agriculture Centre of Kenya said besides a seed bank, they have a learning centre where farmers are taught how to save their seeds.

He added that it is also a multiplying centre for lost seeds in Africa.

Nderitu explained that the process of starting a seed bank is simple as long as you have a piece of land and the seeds that you want to multiply.

No license is required.

“First you must identify the lost seeds. We are not just multiplying any type of seed," nderitu said.

"It must be a seed that we may not have in five to 20 years because of the dangers like genetic modification."

The agri-entrepreneur said they also do training in agro-ecology.

He said anything that affects agricultural production, either positive or negative is agro-ecology.

“We teach farmers on general agro-ecology and seed is one of them. This is because if they do not have good and resilience seeds, this will affect their agricultural production," he said.

"We start with soil fertility management and then food production, seed saving, post-harvest handling and nutrition."

Nderitu added that "Quality seeds means that the seeds are free from pests and diseases and have uniformity in size. That is what we are teaching farmers to do and we make follow ups."

"If we give our seeds to farmers, we make sure that they give us back seeds that are clean and free from pests and disease,"

"We check how they are growing, watering, weeding and the proper processing of the seed, just like Kenya Seed,” he said.  

Nderitu said going forward, he wants to establish seed banks in each county.

He however called upon the state to allow farmers save their own seeds, adding that farmers should not be criminalised for that.

“In our culture, grandmothers were saving their seeds in their homes and that was not criminal, our culture is our heritage. So why destroy our heritage?” he asked.

“Seed saving has been there for many years so why deny our farmers their right.”

The agro-ecologists, said seeds are part of the unit of production, and without seeds, there is no food.

However, with the current situation of climate change and global warming, Nderitu said the seeds that farmers are getting from the agro-vets are not doing well in the farms.

He said this is because of scarcity of water and the rain in Gatuanyaga and and the Eastern region.  

“We have farmers carrying out some experiments, comparing hybrids versus the open pollinated varieties(OPV) and they discovered that the OPVs are flourishing,” Nderitu said.

He said farmers now have the zeal of saving and multiplying their seeds, and they have been flocking his seed bank to get varieties they can take home.

Nderitu said, currently they are doing a seed exchange programme with the farmers.

They are encouraging them to take their seeds to their bank to get the ones they don't have for further multiplication.

He said they are working with over 20,000 individual and group farmers in Murang’a, Kiambu and Machakos counties.

The seed bank has OPVs for legumes such as beans, cow peas, pigeon peas, ground nuts, sorghum, finger millet, pearl millet.

Others are indigenous vegetables like the spider plant/herb, black nightshade and other local vegetables and herbs.

(Edited by Tabnacha O)