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    By George Munene

    Bam­boos are the fast­est-grow­ing woody plant in the world. With the Kenyan gov­ern­ment re­cently re­cog­niz­ing it as the 16th cash crop in the coun­try, Vic­tor Mwanga, chair­man of the Bam­boo As­so­ci­ation of Kenya, says the de­clar­a­tion is only bound to bol­ster the grow­ing of bam­boo by farm­ers, im­prov­ing its value chain as a mar­ket­able com­mod­ity.

    “At whatever level of the bam­boo value chain—as a farmer, seed­ling propag­ator or in the value ad­di­tion space, Kenyan’s are just now wak­ing to the eco­nomic po­ten­tial of bam­boo farm­ing,” says Mwanga.

    “We have worked with Kenya Forest Ser­vice and The Kenya Forestry Re­search In­sti­tute to es­tab­lish 26 new bam­boo nurs­er­ies within a year that offer stand­ard­ised cer­ti­fied seed­lings to farm­ers. This cre­ates jobs for both Bam­boo As­so­ci­ation Mem­bers and private play­ers within the bam­boo sec­tor. 30,000 hec­tares of private farm­land has also come under bam­boo within the same time­frame,”

    Re­lated News: Busi­ness­man re­cruit­ing farm­ers to grow bam­boo and sisal

    Re­lated News: Bam­boo farm­ers win con­tract to power Bidco fur­naces 

    Bam­boo is grass with over 10,000 known uses, pre­dom­in­antly, fur­niture mak­ing, fire­wood, cloth­ing, bead­work­ing as well as it being used in the con­struc­tion and cot­tage in­dus­tries. Bam­boo seed­lings cost on av­er­age Sh250-180, 200 seed­lings are suited to cater to an acre. The plant­lets should be spaced 5M*5M apart, this leaves 25㎡ in between the bam­boos that can be used to in­tro­duce in­di­gen­ous trees. De­pend­ing on the vari­ety and eco­lo­gical zone, bam­boos take on av­er­age three to five years to ma­ture. When grown in with nat­ive tree vari­et­ies bam­boos spur their growth rate as they com­pete for sun­light. Once the bam­boo is har­ves­ted a double can­opy is formed with in­di­gen­ous trees at the top and the grow­ing bam­boo at the bot­tom. Bam­boos are low main­ten­ance re­quir­ing little look­ing after (no weed­ing, ma­nur­ing or fer­til­iser ap­plic­a­tion) once they are es­tab­lished.

    The bam­boo has no tap root, rather fibrous roots which help to break soil hard­pans al­low­ing for air cir­cu­la­tion. A bam­boo clamp has 30-50 culms (stems) with an av­er­age life span of five gen­er­a­tions—up to 120 years, without need­ing re­plen­ish­ing.

    In its ef­fort to achieve 10% forest cover by 2022, the gov­ern­ment is lean­ing on bam­boo to ease log­ging pres­sure on ex­ist­ing forest cover and in­di­gen­ous trees. They are 12 bam­boo spe­cies cer­ti­fied to be grown across the coun­try’s vari­ous eco­lo­gical zones.

    Re­lated News: Model bam­boo cen­ter breed­ing mil­lion­aires

    “The Bam­boo As­so­ci­ation of Kenya serves as an in­form­a­tion portal and con­nects farm­ers with nurs­ery op­er­at­ors as well as people within the bam­boo value ad­di­tion space and aca­dem­ics. The plat­form, though not a trad­ing en­tity, also provides farm­ers with mar­ket link­ages and we are try­ing to stand­ard­ise the buy­ing prices of the dif­fer­ent bam­boo vari­et­ies. We work with farm­ers to teach them how they can add primary value to their wood through cut­ting, split­ting, plan­ing and sand­pa­per­ing this helps them earn more,” Mwanga ex­plains.

    The as­so­ci­ation is also work­ing to train en­gin­eer­ing stu­dents in TVET in­sti­tu­tions, on the use of bam­boo as an al­tern­at­ive to wood in con­struc­tion.

    Vic­tor Mwanga, Bam­boo As­so­ci­ation of Kenya Chair­man:0714636238

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    Anne at her onions farm

    By George Munene

    Upon her gradu­ation, Anne Muriithi was among a se­lect few who got a chance to work for Eger­ton Uni­versity’s Tege­meo In­sti­tute of Ag­ri­cul­tural Policy and De­vel­op­ment in March 2014 under con­tract.

    In two months, however, the re­search con­tract which paid her Sh1500 a day ended leav­ing her job­less. The 2013 Ag­ri­cul­ture Eco­nom­ics gradu­ate from Moi Uni­versity would not have be­lieved it then that in a few short years she would be selling Sh450,000 worth of to­ma­toes.

    ‘’I grew up in Mwea, Embu County and farm­ing was our fam­ily’s primary source of live­li­hood; with job op­por­tun­it­ies hard to come by in Nairobi, I headed back home with the sav­ings from the job to chance my arm at farm­ing,’’ said Anne.

    As a new­bie in ag­ribusi­ness, she spent the bet­ter part of 2014 re­search­ing and gain­ing prac­tical com­mer­cial farm­ing know­ledge through con­sulta­tions with ex­per­i­enced farm­ers and ag­ro­nom­ists. In Janu­ary 2015 she leased five acres of land in Mwea for Sh25,000. On one acre, she grew Sukari F1 wa­ter­melon and had three acres under onions.

    She har­ves­ted eight tonnes of the bulb onions which she sold to traders at Sh30 a kilo. This earned her Sh240,000 while wa­ter­mel­ons raked in Sh150,000.

    Re­lated News: Gar­lic farm­ers earn six times more than reg­u­lar onion farm­ers

    ‘’Though I didn’t quite earn as much as the ideal ag­ro­nom­ists’ pro­jec­tions, I got en­cour­aged that it was doable and gained in­valu­able ex­per­i­ence,’’ said Muriithi.

    In the suc­ceed­ing 2016 sea­son, she de­cided to move on from or­din­ary onion seeds to hy­brid vari­et­ies plant­ing Red Trop­ic­ana F1 and Red Creole on two acres.

    She more than doubled her yield to 19 tonnes. After selling her pro­duce to traders at her farm, she earned Sh0.5m.

    In 2017, she opted to grow French beans for the ex­port mar­ket. Sow­ing in June, she har­ves­ted 1.5 tonnes in less than three months. This earned her Sh75,000 after selling at Sh50 per kilo to an ex­port­ing firm.

    Heavy loses

    Just like any other busi­ness, farm­ing has its own share of chal­lenges. Dis­eases, un­pre­dict­able weather pat­terns and mar­ket down­turns are just a few of the chal­lenges grow­ers face; es­pe­cially new entrants such as Muriithi.

    After suc­cess­ive good har­vests, the 29 years old’s de­sire to clinch the coveted ex­port mar­ket made her bite more than she could chew. She in­ves­ted over Sh300000 to grow snow peas and sugar snaps on a three-acre piece of land away from home in Thar­agua, Laikipia County.

    Hor­ti­cul­tural pro­duce is wa­ter-in­tens­ive and with no piped water on the new farm, she had to ferry in water for ir­rig­a­tion which ate into her ex­penses. Fre­quent vis­its to check on the farm from Nairobi—where she had since moved—also proved costly.

    Just when she thought she had weathered the storm, frost at­tacked her crops and she lost everything. This led her to aban­don the farm and lease it to an­other farmer for the re­mainder of the sea­son.

    Boun­cing back

    After the blow, Muriithi again re­turned home to Mwea. Her par­ents gave her 1.5 acres of their land to grow French beans as well as cov­er­ing her cul­tiv­a­tions costs.

    A down­turn in the ex­port mar­ket meant she wasn’t able to get as much as she’d hoped, but the little she had ac­crued was still enough to en­able her to lease an acre in the neigh­bor­hood.

    Re­lated News: Cab­bages, kales and to­ma­toes earns gradu­ate Sh120,000 in profits in three months

    Re­lated News: 25 Mur­anga farm­ers earn Sh20m a year from French beans through group ex­port con­tract

    “I did not want to squeeze my par­ents on their small piece of land; with the little I had, I leased land to grow French beans and also try out to­ma­toes,’’ said Muriithi.

    Since then, she has been spe­cial­ising in the two crops which she says have be­come her top earners and she has been grow­ing from strength to strength.

    Septem­ber last year she says she har­ves­ted 120 boxes from a two-acre piece of plot in Mwea selling each box at Sh3500-4000, earn­ing her between Sh420,000 and Sh480,000 gross in­come.

    Her ad­vice to the young people who wish to ven­ture into ag­ribusi­ness is that they per­form ex­haust­ive mar­ket re­search and to en­gage well-known ag­ri­cul­ture ex­perts as well as ex­per­i­enced farm­ers be­fore sow­ing a single seed.

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    Black Soldier Fly grower enlisting farmers to earn income

    By George Munene

    Eco­dudu, a waste-to-value com­pany housed at the Chandaria Busi­ness In­nov­a­tion In­cub­a­tion centre, is seek­ing to re­cruit small to me­dium scale farm­ers look­ing to gen­er­ate extra rev­enue by rear­ing the in­sects on their site with the com­pany’s sup­port.

    Black Sol­dier Flies (BSF) are a cheap al­tern­at­ive source of pro­tein for pigs, poultry and fish. They offer equal value to more ex­pens­ive pro­tein sources such as omena, fish­meal and soy­beans thus are use­ful for farm­ers look­ing to lower their pro­duc­tion costs.

    Birthed in 2017, the Com­pany’s co-founder Starlin Farah, ex­plains that a farmer needs to demon­strate a ca­pa­city to feed the flies on sources of or­ganic waste avail­able to them on their farm or house­hold level. Though a green­house works best in rear­ing the fly, a basic farm shed could also be re­pur­posed to house and grow BSF.

    Re­lated News: How to grow own black sol­dier lar­vae for feed­ing in­di­gen­ous chicken

    Re­lated News: High school dro­pout earns de­cent cash form rear­ing earth­worms

    While the black sol­dier fly takes 31 days to ma­ture, Eco­dudu sells farm­ers young lar­vae to rear from the fifth to nine­teenth day—the time they are young lar­vae until about their pre­pupa stage. The in­sects are vo­ci­fer­ous eat­ers and gain up to ten times their weight after just 14 days. The firm buys back ma­ture flies from farm­ers at Sh50-90 per kilo­gram. They are dried and pack­aged as Dudu Meal feed which has a 45% crude pro­tein con­tent and 36% of fats.   

    Black sol­dier flies are neither pests nor vec­tors; like red­worms, they are use­ful in de­com­pos­ing or­ganic sub­strates, com­post­ing house­hold and ag­ri­cul­tural waste products. Eco­dudu sells this for­ti­fied bio-fer­til­iser.

    Eco­dudu seeks to har­ness in­sects as re­cyc­ling agents in use to ad­dress global is­sues such as waste man­age­ment, grow­ing pro­tein de­mand and en­vir­on­mental con­ser­va­tion. The com­pany is part of the FoodTech Africa Ac­cel­er­ator Pro­gram 2020 and its founders are fi­nal­ists for this year's under 30 ag­ri­pren­uer of the year award.

    Farmer Re­gis­tra­tion: https://​ecodudu.​com/​farmers-registration/​

    Eco­dudu: +254 725-888-071/ +254 721-237-009

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