Green Dreams Organic Farming in East Africa

THE GREAT DISCOVOREY
On 5th Sep 2007; at 8.00am I took the farm tractor mounted with the planter with a mission to do the craziest thing in the farm. To plant baby corn seeds in block m03; a block which was still green with vegetation having done the last frenchbeans harvest the previous day. Everyone that morning could not understand what I had woken up for. As I told the driver to move on, he reluctantly obliged, although you could tell from his eyes he was skeptical of the new planting system. I remember the then baby corn supervisor asking me in private that evening if I’m intending to deny them job by having a poor baby corn crop.
One year down the line the no till technology or zero tillage as my agronomy consultant Mr. Pierluigi Maggioni prefers to call it, has made a turn around to the production yield for baby corn and frenchbeans in Kantara farm. The average yields for baby corn shot up by over 40% while on beans by around 20%.This is on top of the savings that has been experienced with the reduction of fuel consumption by slightly over 75%per month. The labor cost has drastically reduced by over 50%. Weeds population has reduced to a manageable level. You don’t have to do any weeding on baby corn throughout the crop cycle if you have a post emergence herbicide done in time. On frenchbeans there’s only one weeding down from three at the late stage of the crop cycle. The incidences of pests and diseases have proportionally reduced to a normal threshold automatically reducing our sprays by a very good margin.
“No till technology is the way to go”, commented the agronomist while reacting to the new innovation. Most horticultural farms are still working on their soils with heavy machinery with a lot of investment. Although known to be an expensive business in terms of imputs; it’s the time for the policy makers in the industry to look for other ways of keeping the business profitable judging from the current economic handicaps that has hit hard on the business industry. With the current inflations, the cost of inputs is rising every other day while the market is still a challenge on competition and fluctuations of prices. No till can also be easily adoptable in the Organic Farming Sector which is rapidly gaining roots in the world’s food safety protocols. Despite the no till option being around in many parts of the world for several decades, not many of us are in touch with its possibility. More campaigns should also be put in place to promote such farming techniques to the benefit of business investors and even local community.This could add several other tones of produce in Kenya’s production accounts.

Jorum ndiritu
The writer is the Farm manager Kantara Farm (VEGPRO) – Thika

Note from Su:

It makes me happy to read this. Lets hope more exporters turn to this form of farming. Not only is it cost effective, more interestingly though less obvious, it is also a ’soil biota friendly’ method of production. ……………a stones throw away from organic production………..:)

Hello, this is Paula. I’m a guest blogger for Su. I wrote about this farm on my blog called Baraza at WildilfeDirect and on a blog about African innovations on Afrigadget and in both cases readers were amazed with what is happening in Kibera. I felt I had to follow up here.

Su called me to tell me that the sunflowers have opened! Recall that They were planted at the end of July using our seed planting gadget (a simple plastic water pipe with a twig taped at the end to create the hole and direct the seed while saving the planters from endless backaches) – I wrote about this and other innovations in Kibera on Afrigadget blog here. It had been months since I’d seen the farm, Peter (BBC Correspondent for East Africa) and I rushed over with Su to get photos knowing that the sight had to be spectacular. Don’t tell him but “Yes” we’re trying to get BBC interested in covering this wonderful positive story out of Africa

We met Abdulahi at the entrance of the farm which is nicely fenced – he had erected a sign banning all photographers!

I discovered that the sunflowers were there for a purpose, and it was not to beautify the farm. Earlier in this blog Su had mentioned slightly elevated levels of heavy metals in some parts of the shamba (farm). It turns out that sunflowers have a unique ability to extract zinc! It’s complicated interaction between the secretions from earthworms which causes the binding of heavy metals which in turn allows plants to take them up. Sunflowers are extraordinarily efficient at this.

The sad news is that you can’t eat the seeds or compost the leaves as this is where the zinc accumulates. The flowers and leaves sadly have to be burned (even though I’d love to take some home to adorn my living room).

The worm farm has evolved! Here’s the new look, a half barrel filled to the brim with material and worms. The litter around is about to go into the tank.

Su and Mohammed spent some time digging in to look at the little critters which were buried deep because the top few inches were quite dry. He was advised to add more water. The worms digest all the household and crop waste and every month the team pour water ontop of the entire tank and catch what comes out. The worm poo which is conveniently called ‘casts’ dissolves and out comes a nutritious brown liquid that is imaginatively called ‘worm tea’. Anyone for a cuppa?

The worms here are a peculiar blue colour …I hope it’s not a bad sign!

Someone on the afrigadget blog asked how the water for irrigation is paid for? Well, here’s the story. The youth reform group own a watertank and they provide a clean water service to anyone in the community. They sell water by the 20 litre jerrycan to anyone in the community. This generates the income needed to pay for the farm irrigation water.

We also heard how these ex criminals challenged a mafia like group up stream the previous week – these guys had disconnected water to the community of hundreds of thousands of people. I can only imagine the image of ex criminals walking over to the water control valve where they organized the permanent opening of the water supply line! The community was so pleased to have water again that all manner of in kind donations for the construction of the community center were received.

Here’s Abdulahi

Victor

And Moha

And here’s Su with the guys during the ‘inspection’

Ok, for some reason lay out is completely all over the place!

Dom just works silently in the background. He recently walked over 8 kilometers (he calls it a nice stroll) with the guys from Kibera to get the vermiculture tanks………..True to his nature he took pictures along the way, of all things interesting including an almost 500 meter bridge spanning a 20 meter wide road crossing………..why the bridge had to do this is anyones guess? AND FOLK JUST LOVE IT!!!

This is Dom

I believe in the saying ‘A river will always flow it’s course’………..no matter what we do, what we think , how we plan………….somethings take on a life of their own…………and now once a dangerous dump site our Organic Farm in Kibera is taking off in all sorts of directions.

Yesterday was the first commercial sale of product !! Totally awesome!!
So added to the advantages of food production, food security, environmental conservation, Youth Reform, we can now add INCOME GENERATION………….

Dominic has been keeping close tabs with the group and is largely responsible for their success. Hats off to you Dom!!
Yesterday whilst helping sort out the infrastructure for their vermiculture tanks, he managed to get these pictures of the group’s first commercial sale of kales and spinach.

The girl in the picture didn’t want her pic taken but the guys insisted as they are so totally proud of their farm

Notice the sunflowers growing with the crops. We’re hoping they will act as both a shade canopy as the weather heats up as well as a crop to help extract heavy metals within the soil. Today we are submitting leaf samples of all the crops (kales, cabbage, corriander, spinach and sunflower) for testing and will post the results asap.
Fingers crossed!!!!!

The Kibera Youth Reform Group transformed this garbage site

to this lush organic plot!!

105 days from start to harvest!!

The Kibera Youth Reform Organic Farm originally a 3 meter deep garbage dump, is finally only days away from harvest!! The transformation which started in April 2008 has taken a mere three and a half months, prooving anything is possible.
In April, Claire Niala came to me with a proposition. The Kibera Youth Reform Group, a group comprising 70 girls and guys in Kibera who had decided to change their ways of crime, requested assistance with an idea they had. They wished to transform a garbage site into a farm, growing crops for their own consumption as well as for sale if possible.

To begin with, I needed to see the area in question and my friend Wakio Seaforth went into Kibera with Mr Saidi one of the representatives of the group. She returned with the following pictures

From then until now the youth have worked at a terriffic pace to make their dreams come true. Assisted by Dominic Wanjihia who trained them in setting up their drip irrigation system, Johara who arranged the soil tests, Zak who assisted in the early days, Claire who made the connections, raised finance and guided the group with their finances and myself…mainly co-ordinating, planning and advising, the following pictures are a testimony to the youth groups hard work and success.

Dominic always impresses me. No two things are done the same way if he has anything to do with it.
We are growing sunflowers between the veg as part of an experimental solution to cleaning the soil. Rather than the usual stoop and plant , Dom designed an easy planting tool, a plastic hallow pipe with recycled yoghurt pot tied to the top and a stick tied to the bottom. Without stooping all you have to do is jab the stick into the ground to make a hole, take a couple of seed from the pot and drop them down the pipe Done! No back ache farming!

The guys and gals in the youth group are almost fully fledged farmers.

Totally Awesome !!

The youth are ecstatic!! The farm is almost fully kitted, the first of its kind in Africas largest slum Kibera,

Where there’s a will, there’s a farm!!

Dominic making sure the piping fits!!

One morning the youth decided the farm was not a real farm without a scarecrow Very cute:)