Farmers in Laikipa, Narok reap better yields

A group of farmers in Laikipia county have reaped a bumper harvest thanks to conservation farming. 

This even as parts of the country grapple with the ravaging drought and effects of climate change.

The farmers in Mitero village of Laikipia East harvested different crops including beans, maize, fruits and vegetables.

They were trained on agroecology, a farming system otherwise referred to as organic farming, conservation agriculture or farming the God’s way.

A community leader, Peter Kamau says most farmers decided to embrace conservation agriculture with the hope of increasing their yields in the arid and semi-arid region.

“For decades, residents were among starving communities, dependent on relief food. Our lands had become infertile and we could not grow sufficient produce to feed our families throughout the year, leave alone get a surplus for sale,” he said.

Kamau said children in the community were dropping out of school or depended on sponsors to continue their post-primary school education since their parents could not afford school fees.

“Fortunes for farmers in Mitero and a few other areas in Laikipia West and Central have changed after they embraced agroecology because one does not have to spend on external input and it is high yielding,” he says.

Kamau said farmers used to buy a lot of inputs including fertilisers and farm chemicals, which were poisoning the soil compared to organic farming where they use compost manure and farm residue for nourishing the ground.

He said inter-cropping and Integrated Pest Management are favourable to the ecosystem compared to harmful herbicides and pesticides, which kill insects indiscriminately.

“I used to harvest as little as one 90kg bag of maize from an acre but I am now getting up to 30 bags from the same portion of land,” Kamau said.

His sentiments were echoed by, Jane Chebet, a potato farmer in Olposimoru, Narok North.

Chebet said her production cost per acre has reduced by almost 75 per cent because besides using organic, readily available farm inputs, she does not till her land.

“I used to spend approximately Sh20,000 on land preparations but I have not turned the soil on my farm for the past four years, which has saved me both time and money,” she said.

Chebet adds that through the training by different pro-organic farming organisations such as Pelum Kenya and Route to Food, she learned that tilling was increasing soil degradation through soil erosion.

She said unnecessary tilling disturbs the ground while turning it puts the humus-rich soil further down from the reach of crops.

It is such practice changes that developed an increasing demand for compost fertilisers and the setting up of factories like Agri-Flora Organic Fertiliser Company in Nyahururu town.

The company uses chicken droppings, cow dung, animal bones, egg-shells and market waste.

Company director, Kuria Kiboi said he started researching the idea of changing and enriching manure into an efficient commodity in the late 2000.

“Different expert groups say the current low farm production is caused by massive soil degradation and nutrients depletion. I am making granulated organic fertiliser to help cure this process and the sales have increased over the years,” he says.

Kiboi uses market waste and rabbit urine to make organic top dressing liquid fertilisers.

The farmers in Laikipia are among others in different parts of Kenya who have reverted to traditional ways of farming.

This is after realising that degraded and nutrients depleted soils were negatively affecting food production.

Some had started reducing the sizes of land they were cultivating due to the high cost of production.

However, as a way of curing their soil and reducing the cost of production, the farmers opted to using organic fertilisers and Integrated Pest Management to manage their farms.

Women are making concoctions and using readily available materials such as wood ash for pest management instead of agrochemicals.

Laikipia Governor Joshua Irungu said his administration is promoting farmers who want to practice, with a budget allocation specifically for conservation agriculture.

He said his administration is trying to set aside a good amount of money in the forthcoming supplementary budget to support agroecology.

“The production of organic agriculture is high particularly in this era of climate change when rains are not predictable and when it rains, the amount of rainfall is low,” Irungu said.

The governor said with conservation agriculture, the soils retain moisture content that can sustain the crop to maturity unlike where there is a lot of tillage.

He mentioned Igwamiti, Githiga and Marmanet in Laikipia West as some of the areas where conservation agriculture has taken root.