- The farmer, who also lost more than 130 cows to drought, is using the current rains to reap gains from onion farming.
- Matamash said Kajiado’s weather is the best for growing onions and expects to harvest at least 9 tonnes of the crop per acre.
Image: KURGAT MARINDANY
Prominent Kajiado farmer Kenny Matampash, who lost more than Sh20 million in crop destruction by elephants early in the year, has embarked on onion farming.
The farmer, who also lost more than 130 cows to drought, is using the current rains to reap gains from onion farming.
Matamash said Kajiado’s weather is the best for growing onions and expects to harvest at least 9 tonnes of the crop per acre.
The farmer who has started with one acre and is preparing three more, said that his last harvest gave him 9,000 kg which he sold at Sh70 each kilo.
“I made Sh630,000 from my last harvest per acre. This is the reason my wife and I are going back to till the land,” said Matampash.
The farmer said he chose to add acreages from one acre forward as he plans to put up an electric fence on his farm.
“During the dry season, I lost many crops, water tanks and pipes to jumbos because I did not have an electric fence on my farm,” he said.
He said it takes exactly 5 months for the crop to harvest and that will enable him to buy more cows and replace those he lost in the drought and at the same time do crops.
Kajiado farmer, he said, has to diversify their livestock economy and not only depend on livestock products.
“I hope our Maasai pastoralists will also consider other means of livelihood while keeping manageable sizes of livestock their land can hold,” he said.
Matampash said he does practice livestock diversification on his farm, which includes poultry, beeping, fish ponds, rabbits and dairy farming using zero grazing.
“These are some of the climate change adaptation strategies and mitigations which are now called "Kilomo Biashara". It is time to change our mindsets and see livestock as a business, not prestige,” added Matampash.
The farmer said he had 187 cows before the last drought and now has less than twenty.
He also had over 400 goats now the number was reduced by the drought to barely 100, adding that forage, fodder pasture management and storage must be promoted amongst the pastoralists.
Matampash, who is also the Neighbours Initiative Alliance, NGO, CEO, said large stocks among the Maasai are causing pressure on pasture.
He said that with 3 acres of onions, he can make Sh1,950,000 in 5 months, and urged every pastoralist in Kajiado to set apart a small part of their farms for growing cash crops.
“Kajiado has the best virgin soil in the country and with the availability of water, anything can grow here,” said the prominent farmer.
He said dairy farming that uses zero grazing is ideal.
“To steadily denounce some retrogressive cultural and social-economic values and practices that do not give us value for money, let us see livestock as business assets that can give a profit,” he said.
We need also to be shareholders of our own livestock economy, he said.
“Stop being stockholders and producers to others who reap maximum profits from our livestock products, while we get peanuts,” said Matampash.
Matampash said the Kajiado Maasai should learn to have value chains for all their livestock products which include milk, beef value, hides and skin, hooves, bones and horns.
“Even our cattle manure ought to be costed and packaged for sale,” he said. The farmer said forming slaughterhouse cooperatives will unite the pastoralists to form their economic goals.
“We need well-managed cooperatives for milk, and milk processing enterprises. We also need to get into livestock product export markets,” the farmer said.
He added that export markets that are now prevailing are in the hands of the cartels who do not even own livestock, but harvest maximum profits from the export market.
“Our people should stop being stakeholders, but be shareholders. Our farms should move into agro-pastoralism. Get into agro-businesses where other non-pastoralists are championing it on our lands,” he added.
The farmer said flower farms, poultry keeping and pig keeping in Kajiado are being managed by non-Maasai.
He urged the local Maasai in the region to stop selling their lands and enter into leasing or shareholders’ agreements with parties interested.
“By so doing this you will not lose your land, the heritage of your children,” he said.
People need education for critical consciousness in order to be able to do analysis on their own situation by asking themselves hard and bold questions.
Image: KURGAT MARINDANY