Farmers still recycling old rice seeds, says KALRO

Farmers in Mwea, Kirinyaga county, are embracing new rice varieties even as scientists say there is still a challenge in recycling old seed varieties that were developed many years ago.

Moses Kariithi, a rice farmer from Mwea Irrigation Scheme, Tebere section, Unit 13, said he has been a rice farmer for many years mainly growing the Basmati rice variety.

Mwea Irrigation Settlement Scheme is located in Kirinyaga county and falls within Mwea East and Mwea West subcounties.

The scheme is implemented by the National Irrigation Authority which has improved, rehabilitated and developed irrigation infrastructure for the farmers to engage in production activities. 

“This is a preferred variety by many consumers, but over the years, yields have been decreasing so I shifted to growing the new Kwamboka rice variety which has higher yields," Kariithi said. 

"Since the rice variety was released, many farmers have adopted its growth due to the higher yields but seed accessibility has been a problem.”

He said seed accessibility is a challenge and some farmers have to recycle seeds from past harvests and this affects production.

“Most of the farmers still recycle their own seeds and this tends to lower rice production. There has also been a challenge with access to enough seeds, like last year, farmers were not able to access seeds," the farmer said. 

"Some areas like Tana River have started introducing rice farming but some of the farmers could not get enough seeds.” 

Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation director general  Dr Eliud Kireger confirmed that a number of factors contribute to low on-farm rice production, including reliance on informal seed systems with limited access to quality seeds. He said this is mainly due to lack of seed certification systems.

According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, the government has identified rice as one of the three major food security crops that include maize and potatoes.

Rice is the third most important crop in terms of food and nutritional security. However, in terms of annual consumption growth, it comes first at 12 per cent compared to maize at one per cent and wheat at four per cent.

Kireger said the last few years’ production of rice was at 80,000 metric tonnes but through interventions by government and development partners in collaborative projects, this has increased to the current production rate of 180,000 metric tonnes.

He said consumption continues to grow and now stands at 949,000 tonnes and this is expected to increase to 1,290,000 tonnes by 2030 due to population growth.

The high cost of maize and maize flour has pushed many Kenyan households to diversify to alternative affordable foods like rice.

The current food crisis featured prominently at the first joint symposium that was held by KALRO and the Korean Africa Food and Agricultural Cooperation Initiative.

“We are spending a lot of forex exchange to import rice. The symposium sought to see how to increase production by looking at the seed systems," Kireger said, adding that farmers want to maximise on production while consumers want to maximise on quality.

"Improved varieties are key and Korea is more advanced in rice production than Kenya and we are trying to tap into their technology.”

Kireger said the Kafaci project is being implemented in more than 20  African countries.

In Kenya, this is being implemented within Kenya’s National Rice Development Strategies developed with the support of the Coalition for Africa Rice Development to double rice production by the year 2030.

“The project has been ongoing for about three years and has immensely helped build the seed multiplication, dissemination capacity and infrastructure that will accelerate farmer access to quality seed,” the director general said.

“It will also help streamline breeding and provision of adequate quality seeds from some of the local cultivars that are dear to farmers but have not been cleaned to ensure true to type production.

"The actors in the rice value chain, especially the contracted seed growers and merchants are expected to benefit from trickle effects of quality paddy production, resulting in improved socioeconomic wellbeing.”

(edited by Amol Awuor)