JM So­cial Icons

    Radio show turns bar­ren lands into ar­row­root oases

    Kathuiria Poverty Re­duc­tion Group, a Farmer Voice Radio (FVR) Listener Club based in the Cent­ral Province of Kenya, has en­thu­si­ast­ic­ally fol­lowed FVR broad­casts on Coro FM since they first heard them.

    Mem­bers of the group have taken up the chal­lenge of put­ting FVR radio ag­ri­cul­tural in­form­a­tion into prac­tice. For ex­ample, FVR pro­grams on up­land grow­ing of ar­row­root, a pop­u­lar staple food in the re­gion that tra­di­tion­ally grows in marshy grounds, have in­spired a num­ber of the group mem­bers to adopt this new prac­tice.

    One mem­ber of the group, Mr. Zablon Ki­mindu, was so in­spired by a pro­gram on fish farm­ing that he has de­veloped a small fish pond on his one-acre piece of land. “After listen­ing to a suc­cess­ful fish farmer from Sagana talk about the be­ne­fit he has de­rived from fish farm­ing on radio, I real­ized that the gov­ern­ment was not the only source of ag­ri­cul­tural in­form­a­tion and that farm­ers could learn from one an­other,” says Mr. Ki­mindu. After the broad­cast, Mr. Ki­mindu ob­tained the tele­phone num­ber of the fish farmer from the radio sta­tion and made ar­range­ments to visit him. “I came to know about or­na­mental fish whose mar­ket is ap­par­ently very huge both loc­ally and in­ter­na­tion­ally,” he re­por­ted.

    Using the few re­sources at his dis­posal, and im­pro­vising with loc­ally avail­able ma­ter­ial, Mr. Ki­mindu is de­term­ined to suc­ceed in a ven­ture that only a few years ago would have been shunned by many farm­ers in a re­gion that tra­di­tion­ally does not con­sume fish. Mr. Ki­mindu’s de­term­in­a­tion and en­thu­si­asm has been con­ta­gious. Peers in his neigh­bor­hood have en­quired about fish farm­ing and he freely shares what he has learnt with them. Three farm­ers are in the pro­cess of de­vel­op­ing their own fish ponds as a res­ult.

    Com­ments (0)

    RSS
      At­tach im­ages by drag­ging & drop­ping or by se­lect­ing them.
      The max­imum file size for up­loads is 10MB. Only gif,jpg,png files are al­lowed.
       
      The max­imum num­ber of 3 al­lowed files to up­load has been reached. If you want to up­load more files you have to de­lete one of the ex­ist­ing up­loaded files first.
      The max­imum num­ber of 3 al­lowed files to up­load has been reached. If you want to up­load more files you have to de­lete one of the ex­ist­ing up­loaded files first.
      Post­ing as

      Com­ments powered by CCom­ment

      Ed­itor's Pick

      All News

      Powered by mod LCA
      Farm­Biz Africa © 2020