By RAMENYA GIBENDI rgibendi@ke.nationmedia.com

IN SUMMARY

· Even with the establishment of the National Irrigation Board, whose mandate includes subsidising rice farming, farmers in the region have continued to make losses, leading many of them to turn to fast-maturing crops like water melon, yams, and indigenous vegetables.

· In 2007, after doing online research on dairy farming, he bought two heifers from a large-scale dairy farmer in Rift Valley at a cost of Sh140,000.

· According to him, all the knowledge he has on managing his animals, including treatment, are self-taught. He has never attended a field day for farmers due to the demanding nature of his work.

A disastrous flood that swept across the Kano plains in 1962 prompted the government to establish the Ahero irrigation scheme in an attempt to improve the fortunes of local residents through rice farming.

Alternating periods of drought and flood coupled with poorly drained soils have confined the residents to rice farming in spite of the crop’s perennial unprofitability.

Even with the establishment of the National Irrigation Board, whose mandate includes subsidising rice farming, farmers in the region have continued to make losses, leading many of them to turn to fast-maturing crops like water melon, yams, and indigenous vegetables.

In 2005, one of the farmers, Mr Jonam Okok, borrowed Sh200,000 which he invested in rice farming on his four-acre parcel of land. He says that he got nothing and had to repay the loan from his salary.

“It is said that you can make about Sh400,000 from an acre of rice. Ask me, that is a fallacy,” says Mr Okok.

Later, he turned to dairy farming, a field he says no one in the region has successfully exploited.

“When it rains, you get pools of water all over this place and it gets very cold. This is tough on dairy cows as they are susceptible to disease, so many cows die,” he says.

In 2007, after doing online research on dairy farming, he bought two heifers from a large-scale dairy farmer in Rift Valley at a cost of Sh140,000.

He started experimenting with different rearing techniques which he had gathered on the Internet. Many of the techniques, he says, have worked in desert countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia.

“I settled on zero-grazing as the weather conditions here are too harsh to allow cows to roam free, especially during the rainy season,” he says.

Dairy farming is an expensive venture, but Mr Okok is lucky to have access to free feeds from the abundantly available rice straws.

The straws are treated with urea to boost their protein content, then mixed with molasses, mineral salts, and salt lick. Calves and milk cows are fed on napier grass planted on the farm.

The two cows he started with have since grown into a herd of 21 which he estimates to be worth Sh1.2 million.

“I once took a loan of Sh100,000 to buy a Friesian cow which died even before calving, but I was not weighed down by that,” he says.

The 56-year-old farmer has insured his herd and pays a premium of four per cent of the worth of each animal, amounting to about Sh60,000 annually, a cost which he says is negligible considering the high cost of acquiring high breed cows.

The four cows that are currently being milked produce an average of 50 litres a day, although he says the output can be doubled. He sells the milk locally at Sh60 a litre, making about Sh90,000 a month, money which he says has seen his four children through school. Much of the milk is consumed in Kisumu and its environs.

According to him, all the knowledge he has on managing his animals, including treatment, are self-taught. He has never attended a field day for farmers due to the demanding nature of his work.

“I am an accountant at a school and the little time I have is dedicated to the animals, but I have learnt so much from the Internet that I hardly even deal with veterinary doctors any more,” says Mr Okok.

Poor service

He said he stopped using the services of veterinary officers allegedly because of their negligence and poor service.

This and the lack of regular extension services from the Ministry of Livestock, he says, have over the years forced him to be his own veterinary doctor as well as animal nutritionist.

Although he has two farm hands, the school accountant wakes up at 5am to treat the rice straws and leaves instructions on the feeding of the animals.

He keeps three breeds; Friesian, Ayrshire, and Red Poll, a dual purpose breed. He says his land can accommodate 70 cows.

• Farmers will no longer be required to physically seek advice from an extension officer on how to yield more crops.
• They will get information either through voice calls, text messaging, the internet and digital libraries and has instructed agricultural officers to set up desks at the local market on the respective sale days.
• It is estimated that 65 per cent of Kenyan farmers’ use mobile phones of which the Agriculture PS Romano Kiome attributed the decision to adopt innovative solutions.

The Ministry of Agriculture has gone digital in a move to increase productivity and heighten food security. Through their mobile phones, farmers can get information from agricultural officers who will be equipped with laptops and smart phones.

They will no longer be required to physically seek advice from an extension officer on how to yield more crops.

Agriculture PS Romano Kiome on Thursday said the ministry had been pushing for the implementation of the project worth Sh50 million for several years and it expects the county governments to implement it.

“Application of the e-extension has the potential to increase productivity of Kenyan farmers, majority of whom are small scale farmers, through improved delivery of services,” the PS said.

He was speaking during the launch of the plan dubbed ‘E-Extension’ at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute headquarters in Nairobi.

He said the ministry has acquired 624 extension kits with which farmers get information either through voice calls, text messaging, the internet and digital libraries.

He has also instructed agricultural officers to set up desks at the local market on the respective sale days.

“This idea focuses on creating an electronic and interactive bridge where farmers, fishers and other stakeholders meet and transact to enhance productivity, profitability and competitiveness,” he said.

It is estimated that 65 per cent of Kenyan farmers’ use mobile phones of which the Agriculture PS Romano Kiome attributed the decision to adopt innovative solutions.

The ministry, he said, seeks to address the gap created by the inadequate staff who serve as the ministry’s point of contact with the farmers.

“Application of the e-extension will take advantage of recent advancement of telecommunications and information technology where the percentage of household owning a computer or mobile phone stands at 3.6 per cent and 63.2 per cent respectively,” Dr Kiome said, quoting from the 2009 National Population and Housing Census report.

He added that there are 5,600 extension agricultural officers compared to the 8,000 required in the field.

“Some of the notable advantages of using these platforms are efficient delivery of information to users thus prompting appropriate action and intervention.

“Sending a simple text message from a mobile phone, for instance, on availability of subsidised fertiliser at the National Cereals and Produce Board depots would go a long way in ensuring farmers acquire inputs in time,” Dr Kiome said.

Kenya is renowned for the success of the mobile money transfer technology and the ministry hopes this new communication system will catch up as well.

The ministry plans to equip 1,450 information desks in every ward with the kit, train 3,000 extension staff on information sourcing from the e-extension and another 720,000 on how to access the information.

Further, it seeks to equip its 4,700 Frontline Extension Workers (FEW) with the mobile kits to maintain communication with the thousands of farmers across the country. “We expect that by the end of this calendar year, we will be reaching over 1.5 million people through these kits and in three years we expect to package 80 per cent of our programmes this way,” Dr Kiome said.

He called on governors to prioritise the project in their budgets and assured them of support from the central government.

Source: By LILLIAN ONYANGO; laonyango@ke.nationmedia.com

The National Cereals and Produce Board is expected to open the centres in every district in Embu, Meru and Tharaka-Nithi counties.

Brokers have been taking advantage of farmers following bumper harvests by buying the crop at throw-away prices. While the cereals board is offering Sh3,000 for a 90kg sack of maize, brokers are buying it at less than Sh2,000.

“We experienced a bumper harvest and we don’t want it to go to waste. Many farmers are selling their produce at throw-away prices and could face hunger soon. The government wants to replenish the grain reserves to boost food supply” said Mr Mbiuki.

The government has installed 14 mobile driers in the region amid worries that maize was going to waste after it takes in moisture due to poor storage.

Mr Mbiuki also said the government would look into the possibility of subsidising seeds this planting season.
“We sent seeds to various district agricultural offices countrywide to help farmers plant in time,” he said.

“Madam, we are not in a good mood today, are we?” the big man called out after her. Olivia did not respond. She can’t talk.
Olivia is a resident of Amboni Farm in Mweiga, just outside Nyeri town. She is a prized cow, the product of years of meticulous breeding. The big man is former powerful minister Chris Murungaru whose other love outside politics is cattle breeding and dairy farming. Dr Murungaru the cattleman is hardly known outside local and international research stations.

Best stock
By making use of modern technology, Amboni Farm currently boasts among the best stock one can find anywhere in the world. Olivia, for instance, produces between 40 and 50 litres of milk a day. For most dairy farmers, getting 15 litres a day from a cow is considered quite an achievement. Buying Olivia would require one to part with something in the region of Sh250,000.

From the superior stock, Amboni Farm supplies semen to local research stations such as Kabete and to farms in countries like Zambia, Malawi, USA, Canada and New Zealand, among others.
“Animal breeding has been my passion through most of my working life. This is something I started long before I went into politics. It is something I can’t let even politics interfere with. This is my other life,” says Dr Murungaru, a former MP for Kieni where the farm is situated.

And on his 22-acre spread lies a nugget that can catapult thousands of small-scale farmers into middle income earners in a short span of time given the right knowledge and tenacity.
“I have always been fascinated by the idea of making maximum use of small pieces of land to get maximum returns for the farmer. The secret is breeding, breeding and more breeding,” says Dr Murungaru.
When he established the farm in 1986, he soon realised that through utilising innovations in technology, it was possible to get a cow to give more milk than people thought was possible.
Although it has taken 23 years of research, the farm today has cows that would make any dairy farmer’s dreams come true.

However, Dr Murungaru acknowledges that the cost of breeding is on the higher side. An embryo off Amboni Farm for implantation in other cows is quoted at $350 (Sh27,000).
“What we are hoping for is that in the near future we will be able to establish a breeding centre where we can concentrate all technologies to produce high yielding animals that are also accessible to farmers in terms of cost,” he says.

“That we are able to keep 140 animals on 22 acres means that a farmer with an acre can keep four cows. If they produce an average of 40 litres each, the farmer can sell 160 litres a day. If you deduct the cost of production, the farmer would have an income of over Sh80,000 a month.”

Move millions
With this kind of income, Dr Murungaru continues, the country will be able to move millions of people from below the poverty line to the middle-income brackets.
He suggests that the government consider giving credit to small scale farmers to enable them upgrade their animals for maximum returns. He says that once milk production is optimised, a farmer will be able to comfortably service a bank loan or any credit advanced to him and at the same time improve his living standards.
In the proposed breeding centre, four technologies will be combined to produce the ideal dairy cow. The breeding techniques will include basic artificial insemination, embryo transfer (where fertilisation is done outside the womb and implanted in the animal) and gender selection, all of which have been successfully carried out at the farm.
Embryo transfer is important because, under natural breeding, only a fraction of the reproductive potential of one animal is achieved. While the average bull will sire 15 to 50 calves a year, a cow will produce an average 10 calves in a lifetime. In embryo transfer, a cow is treated to achieve super-ovulation.
Once this happens, artificial insemination using certified sperms of genetically superior bulls is applied. The resulting embryos are harvested and transferred to surrogate mothers for gestation. This is already happening on the farm.
“When we eventually get the centre off the ground, we will be able to embrace cutting-edge technology called Genomics. Using this technology, you are able to do DNA analysis of a bull strands to determine how much milk its heifer will produce and how they will look like,” says Dr Murungaru.

Processed and analysed
Gender selection is even more exciting. Here, sperms are processed and analysed to the extent that a farmer is 100 per cent sure he is going to get a heifer instead of having to wait for generations to get it.
“If we can have such centres replicated around the country, we would make efficient means of production available and expose farmers and just as many households to the global opportunities made available by technological transfer,” says Dr Murungaru.

Though a pharmacist by profession, Dr Murungaru is well versed in animal genetics through personal research and linkages with breeders from around the world.
The farm has produced bulls that have been sold to local research stations where they have continued to set records. The most popular bull at Kabete, called Kaburu, came from the farm. To date, it has sired 10,000 animals.
In addition to breeding, the farm produces 1,200 litres of milk a day from 60 cows. The milk is collected by Brookside Dairy.
The rest of the herd includes calves and cows that are waiting to calf down. The cattle pens are designed to accommodate animals in various stages of development.

The first stage
In the first stage – the nursery – the age of the calves ranges from one day to 12 weeks. Among the new calves are Jelimo and Doris, both sired by a bull from the US. “We only breed heifers unless we have a definite order for a bull. We can’t afford to feed bulls,” says Dr Murungaru.
Orders for bulls come from local and international research stations. The bulls are bred up to an age where they can produce semen for harvesting.
From an early age, calves are introduced to fodder such as wheat straw so they can develop capacity for digestion. At six weeks, they are moved to weaning. Here, their weight gain is closely monitored and balanced feed rations are formulated.
“De-stocking at various stages, and depending on orders, is continuously necessary because we are essentially a breeding farm. Selling specially bred cows to other farmers is our core business. We also have to be holding the exact number of animals we can manage to feed comfortably,” says Dr Murungaru.

Pregnancy confirmed
Heifers that have been inseminated are held in special pens until pregnancies are confirmed before they are moved again to the steaming unit where they wait to calf-down. Cows being milked are dried up two months before they calf-down.
“A few days before they calf-down, we move them to another special holding area and eventually to the maternity for delivery. After maternity we have a ward for recovery,” he said.
A cow’s full potential for milk production after calfing down is 60 days. During this time, they feed from a common trough in a special section to encourage competition, which helps the individual cow realise optimal production.
The cows are also trained to be calm. “For a cow to produce milk to its full capacity, it has to be very calm. Every cow has it own ‘personality’ which you need to understand to help it reach its potential,” he said.
With a river running through it, Amboni Farm uses irrigation to supplement natural rain for growing foliage. Manure from the cows is used on the farm. Foliage grown on the farm is used to make silage, which can be stored for years on end.
Running the farm has its challenges, though. “Because we are on a slope, we are unable to make extensive use of machinery so the cost of labour is high,” he said.
Currently, the electricity rationing programme has slowed down the farm’s operations as chores like milking are done using electric machines. Fodder is also prepared using electricity. Without a standby generator, operations are interrupted every three days in a week.
And the last 23 years have not been without challenges. For instance, when the then Kenya Creameries Co-operative started tottering towards the end of the 1980s, the farm found itself producing milk without a market, something Dr Murungaru describes as particularly demoralising.
“With proper management, market for milk should never be a problem. Countries such as New Zealand depend almost exclusively on milk produced in the country. There is no reason the same should not happen in Kenya,” says Dr Murungaru.
Dr Murungaru’s love affair with cows started as a boy herding his grandfather’s cows around Mt Kenya. He belongs to a generation when the main chore for young boys was looking after cows.
“As a boy, I would graze our cows in Hombe and Gathirathiru forests that are part of Mt Kenya before I joined school. We learnt everything there was to learn about taking care of cows. It was a man’s job and this is how I came to love cattle. Throughout my schooling, all the way to university, I was always around our cows during holidays,” he recalls. However, those were the traditional breeds.

Source: Daily Nation Newspaper. Posted on Saturday August 29, 2009. By. Gakiha Weru.

By STELLA CHERONO

Posted Monday, December 17 2012 at 18:07

Just two years ago, Ben Okuta and other fishermen were disappointed by the dwindling fish stocks in Lake Victoria, but they found a new way of earning a living.

The fishermen have started to practise floating cage aquaculture. With the help of the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (Kemfri), the fishermen have built floating cage ponds that they have placed in Lake Victoria. They can now relax at home and still generate enough revenue for their families from the venture.

“We have 31 cages which we use as ponds to breed fish. We have installed them at the Dunga Beach, where we keep monitoring them,” said Mr Okuta.

He said that each of the pond, which measures 2.5 metres square, is used to breed 1,600 fish, which take between five and six months before harvesting.

“Each fish goes for Sh120, which earns us, a total of Sh130,000 per cage,” said Mr Okuta.

The project began two years ago, when a Ugandan farmer who had his own fish cages at the Swan Farm in Jinja shared the idea with the former fishermen at the Dunga Beach.

“He was sharing the Ugandan experience of the water hyacinth and said that he was in a group of farmers who had started floating cages aquaculture as a way of adapting to the changing lake environment,” said Mr Okuta.

On learning about the practice, the fishermen at the beach formed a group that later invited the Ugandan farmer to help them build the cages.

“He then held a series of meetings to teach us how to breed the fish in the cages and a few safety precautions,” he said. “Each cage has the capacity to breed 2,000 fish, but we chose to breed 1,600 to give them ample space.”

The cages are made from metals that are placed together and held afloat using empty jerrycans. The ‘walls’ of the submerged fish ponds are made from nets which are tied to the metal bars.

After the cages have been assembled together, they are anchored to the beach so that they cannot be swept away by the waves in the lake.

“We get the fingerlings from different places but most frequently from Sagana fish farm, Dominion farm and from the Lake Basin Development Authority” Dunga Fisher Cooperative Society secretary Maurice Ongowe said.

He said that the group specifically breeds the tilapia nilotica and the tilapia exlentus (which is white in colour). Fingerlings for the two are given to the farmers by Kemfri for free.

“Initially we mixed males and females in the same cage but we realised that the males were smaller in size when they were harvested, so we decided to only breed females” Mr Ongowe said.

The farmers sell their fish to several hotels in the lakeside city, depending on their demand. “We never lack market and we harvest them when they are just 500 grammes or plate size, because the hotels prefer the size,” he said.

This form of fish farming, according to Mr Ongowe, is good since the fish is kept in a clean environment.

“It is not like the aquaculture that is done on land, where the water is not fresh because of the feed and lack of an outlet for the water. The fish in this setting can also feed from the lake like the other fish,” Mr Ongowe said.

“The fish is fed with food pellet that are recommended by Kemfri who also use them for their research on diseases, growth and behaviour.”

The farmers only harvest the fish depending on the number that has been ordered. They also give the clients a chance to choose which fish they want because the cages are portable.

The existence of the hyacinth in the lake is the biggest challenge to the farmers, who say that despite the cages being anchored to the beach, they’re sometimes swept and destroyed by the dense cover of the aquatic weed. Even though not often, some fingerlings also die during transportation to Dunga.

“We have not experienced theft because we have employed someone to watch over them at night,” Mr Ongowe said. The farmers together with other fishermen formed the Dunga Fisher Co-operative Society where they invest in shares, lend and borrow for a at a 10 per cent interest.

Other than the revenue the farmers earn from the cage fish farming, they receive tourists who pay Sh500 per boat for educational trips to the cages, which are just about 100 metres from the beach.

“Every year, each member earns a dividend, depending on the shares they have invested in the society,” said the co-operative’s official.

Source; scherono@ke.nationmedia.com

Maryanne Atieno and her two daughters spread fresh produce of black-eyed pea leaves, popularly known as kunde, at Ahero shopping centre. It is 5pm and the produce needs to be transported by the next bus to Nairobi.

She tells Money that her customers have run out of supply and she is under pressure to deliver 150 kilogrammes of kunde by the following day. That is about five gunny bags.

After battling with poverty for many years, Ms Atieno ventured into commercial farming of indigenous vegetables on her one-acre plot of land in Magina village in the heart of Kano Plains two years ago.

The indigenous vegetables, traditionally considered a darling of the rural population, have been gradually gaining popularity among urban residents, to the advantage of Ms Atieno who says her biggest markets are in Nairobi, Nakuru, and Naivasha.

The mother-of-four has divided her land into several plots and planted kunde in a manner that ensures a constant supply of approximately five bags a week.

She makes about Sh8,500 in a week, translating to Sh34,000 in a good month.

She says that not even rice, the popular cash crop in the area, would have earned her half that amount in a month considering that rice takes about five months to mature, the high cost of the investment notwithstanding.

To keep her small farm productive, Ms Atieno relies on casual labour that she says is cheaply available in her village.

“It is easy to get people to pick and pack my cow peas into bags at Sh100 for every bag,” she says.

After picking, she transports the leaves to Ahero shopping centre, about 10 kilometres away, where sorting and re-packaging is done before sending to Nairobi for distribution and resale.

She receives her payment via mobile money transfer service, for instance M-Pesa.

Maximising output

Ms Atieno says many farmers irrigate their farms during dry spells using water from rivers Nyando and Kibos, which meander through the villages.

Ms Atieno is not making it big alone. Several other farmers in the area are increasingly turning their otherwise little income-earning parcels of land into gold mines.

Many small-scale farmers in Apondo and Magina villages in Kano, Nyanza, have found a way of maximising the output of their small farms by planting kunde and other fresh vegetables.

Mr Kennedy Oriare is one of them. He says traditional vegetables are cheap and easy to cultivate compared to rice, thereby ensuring maximum profit to the small-scale farmers.

“With these indigenous vegetables, you do not need a huge parcel of land, even a quarter-acre can sustain a family of five,” he told Money.

In the urban market, 30 kilogrammes of kunde goes for Sh1,700 during high season and Sh800 in low season during the long rains.

An equivalent quantity of mitoo and mrenda(other indigenous vegetable varieties) goes for Sh2,000 and Sh2,500 respectively, regardless of the season.

So profitable is the new agribusiness that Ahero shopping centre is awash with farmers and middlemen transacting daily from 3am to 6pm.

Mr Oriare says some of the indigenous vegetables find their way to big hotels and supermarkets as much as in the open air markets in towns.

Kano is located on the eastern side of Lake Victoria and experiences alternating periods of severe drought and floods due to the alluvial soils that are prone to poor drainage, a fact that poses a challenge to other agricultural activities in the region.

Overpopulation has worsened the situation by piling pressure on available land, rendering any large-scale farming almost impossible.

Severe flooding

The extreme drought and severe flooding weather patterns mean that only fast-maturing plants can survive because slow maturing crops would either get washed away by floods or dry due to water scarcity.

The farmers, mostly women like Ms Atieno, have consequently turned to planting varieties of  indigenous vegetables like crotolaria (mitoo), jute plant (mrenda), and black-eyed bean (kunde), which they sell to urban markets.

The indigenous vegetables take an average of eight weeks (two months) to mature, a period Ms Atieno says is short enough to sustain her income, considering that the vegetables are grown all year round, except during flood.

She says that she has been able to adequately provide for her family, which she could hardly accomplish several years ago.

“My first born is in Form Two while my three other children are in primary school. Nowadays feeding them is not a problem, the way it was before,” she says.