Kitui officials blame food insecurity on maize farming craze

Agricultural officials in Kitui have blamed the cycles of famine in the county on farmers' obsession with maize. 

The authorities said maize farming rarely gives good yields due to poor rains in the county.  

In Kitui, 178,000 farmers are into maize farming, even as they ignore early maturing and drought-resistant crops like millet, sorghum, green grams and cowpeas, which do well in the region. 

John Thuo, a crop officer in Kitui county, in October told a farmers' meeting in Kitui town that the quantity of maize seeds that farmers plant every season was equivalent to the amount of maize the entire Kitui population of 1.13 million people would feed on for a month.

Available data at the county agricultural department shows that only 98,000 and 61,000 cereal farmers respectively grow resilient and drought-tolerant sorghum and millet.

However, the Kitui County Executive Member for Agriculture Emmanuel Kisangau said on Tuesday that drought-tolerant crops ignored by the farmers hold the key to ending food insecurity and poverty in the county.

“In every ward we have two to three extension officers explaining to the farmers the need to grow high-value and drought-tolerant crops," Kisangau said. 

“We do not refer to the crops as traditional due to negative connotation but refer them as high-value crops because they are good food and fetch good money in the market.

“We are looking at securing good health for our communities. When people eat healthy food, we keep them out of hospital where they need a lot of money to buy medicine. At the same time we are managing with the prevailing weather."

Kisangau said it would be foolhardy for Kitui people to continue growing maize, which needs a lot of rain while fully aware that rains are hardly adequate to support the maize crop to its maturity.

“As a government, we are actually leading by example. We have acquired Sh15 million worth of green grams and cowpeas seeds. We have little seed support from Red Cross for Mutha ward. FAO [Food and Agricultural Association] has also given us seeds,” Agriculture CEC said. 

He said this rainy season the county was distributing 62.29 metric tonnes of green grams and cowpeas seeds to farmers in 33 out of 40 wards in the county. He said the targeted areas were ideal for the drought tolerant crops.

The Kitui acting chief officer of agriculture, Francis Kitoo, who is a professional agriculturalist, in an interview on Monday, put a case for indigenous crops as a means to minimise the pangs of famine and poverty in the county.

He said that the ecological zones ideal for maize in the county was only found was within a radius of 15km from Kitui town with some pockets in Nzambani, Kyuluni, Migwani, Nguutani, Mutonguni and Matinyani.

The rest of Kitui county was ideal for livestock keeping and drought-resistant crops that would mature early even in the wake of depressed rains, Kitoo said. 

He also said that once in a while, when the rains are extremely good, most parts of Kitui get good maize yields.

“But such good and happy seasons only come once after every 5 to 7 years. Most of the times, our rains are not good and not sufficient for maize growing,” the chief officer said. 

“In fact we can only ignore food like millet at our peril. The micro-nutrients in millet way surpass those of maize. They are actually very good food for young children and elderly people,” Kitoo said. 

He said that Kitui people had been brainwashed to the point of thinking that maize was cool and best food for the civilised people, making them abandon traditional foods.

(edited by Amol Awuor)