Kenya: Self Help Group Reaps from Crop Diversification

By Lilian Museka

MURANGA---When Hannah Wairimu 48, lost her husband in 2009, she thought the world had crumbled on her as she was left with the burden of feeding their four children and taking them to school.

The family, living in Karwaya Village of Kandara district, had been dependent on coffee growing but due to poor marketing strategies of the crop, they incurred losses. Meanwhile, her income was dwindling day by day thereby making it impossible to take care of her family.

The widow invested in diversifying crops on her small farm, thanks to the Agricultural Technologies Information Response Initiative (ATIRI) programme introduced by Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI).

Wairimu now grows passion fruits, avocadoes, bananas, and strawberry for commercial purposes thereby earning her enough money to send her children to school, feed them and take care of other needs.

“Through this programme, I have managed to educate my four children. They had stopped schooling as I could no longer afford fees for them. They have now completed and are also busy fending for themselves,” Wairimu adds.

Diversification is a process of growing various crops on a farm during different seasons, which provides produce all through the year.

In 2001, KARI requested for proposals from farmers in both Eastern and Central Kenya. Mbaari Ya Mboche Selft Help Group’s proposal, which Wairimu belongs to was selected.

Mr. Samuel Kiiru, a researcher at KARI, says the group’s proposal was based on selling passion fruits for commercial purposes to alleviate poverty and food insecurity in the area.

“In 2002, we disseminated the knowledge to them on how to plant the crop through a demonstration plot where a fruit nursery was set up. After the seedlings were ready for transplanting, a plot was set up where passion fruit growing technologies were demonstrated,” Kiiru says.

The 44 member self help group, initially presented a project on technology of upscaling  on passion fruit production. They were trained by KARI on how to implement the project, apart from contributing 7.6 per cent of the project funds, land and materials to construct the fruit nursery.

Under the chairmanship of Mr. Peter Gicheru, a retired Supplies Officer at KARI, the group recorded good consecutive seasons of selling their produce for export.

“Middle men come to our homes to pick the ready fruits or sometimes we take them to Githunguri market where they (middle men) come and buy them for export,” Gicheru proudly states.

However, the group faced a challenge of frequent supply as passion fruits have a 3 to 4 year cycle and considering that they are small scale farmers, they could not meet the demand of both the local and international markets.

“These farmers are small scale and the amount of passion fruit they grow does not satisfy the market. The fruit also has a limited cycle of three to four years and this makes it hard for them,” says Kiiru.

Gicheru says they introduced diversification where they would divide their farms into smaller portions and started growing different crops under the same KARI programme.

“We sought for advice from KARI and they helped us by carrying out trial projects which would work on our farms. Avocadoes, strawberry, bananas, spinach and kales worked for us perfectly,’’ says a happy Gicheru.

The group comprising of 21 males and 23 females realized good earnings from the project through export and local market. It was also a good move as the fruits served their nutrition value at the family level.

Realizing that some crops were taking a long period of time to bear fruits, they again went back to KARI for help. The group was trained on grafting.

During an interview with Margaret Muchui, a field officer at KARI, she explained that grafting is a process of joining a root stock of a crop to a cyone (upper side of the stem) to another. This she says reduces gestation period, improves on the quality and quantity of the final product and tolerance to some crop diseases.

Muchui adds that before grafting is done, crop compartibility tests are done to ascertain which types can be grafted.

“Some of the crops we have grafted so far include the passion fruit, avocadoes, macadamias and strawberry.  We have managed to reduce some gestation period from 10 – 15 years to 3-5 years. This has increased on their production of different crops therefore having a high supply to the market throughout the year”,  she says.

However, every success comes with a challenge. Wairimu says sometimes they face challenges of disease and pest infections where they have to incur costs of buying pesticides. Others include limited access to water  as they only share water from the nearby Ithani stream, excess supply in the market thereby causing wastage.

“Forty per cent of the produce goes to waste due to poor handling and marketing. Sometimes the crops may not meet the international export standards, which means the produce are rejected. This means the famer incurs the return costs and wastage of the products,” admits Kiiru.

Kiiru says farmers may also reduce on infections by ensuring good management of the farms and using root stocks that are drought resistance thereby saving up to 60 per cent of their produce.

The project has helped the small scale farmers in the region to improve on their productions. Meanwhile, KARI plans to replicate the same throughout the country.