By George Munene

Meru farm­ers are mak­ing premium earn­ings from the dif­fer­ence in their rainy sea­son, which means they can de­liver pota­toes when they are most scarce and prices are highest.

Whilst in most parts of the coun­try long rains run from April to late May those of Kibiri­chia, Meru County last from Oc­to­ber to Decem­ber. This, coupled with proper stor­age sys­tems, en­ables potato farm­ers from the re­gion to pro­duce for the mar­ket at times when pro­duce is scarce and prices are higher.

For Al­fred Mweti, a potato farmer in the re­gion, the av­er­age cost of pro­duc­tion for an acre piece of land runs him about Sh20,000. Plant­ing high pro­du­cing potato vari­et­ies such as Shangi and As­ante, with proper ag­ro­nomic prac­tices, an acre yields 110-80 50kg bags that can be sold at a me­dian price of Sh2500.

Mweti grows his pota­toes over two sea­sons: the Oc­to­ber to Decem­ber long rains and March to May shorter rains. Most pota­toes pro­duced over Decem­ber usu­ally sell at a premium as most parts of the coun­try have enough rain to pro­duce bulk quant­it­ies. De­pend­ing on the pre­vail­ing mar­ket prices, the pota­toes are im­me­di­ately sold or stored to be sold when mar­ket prices are fa­vor­able. “It’s a wait­ing game; with good stor­age, pota­toes go for up to four months without going bad— most small-scale farm­ers however lack the fa­cil­it­ies for proper stor­age for such a long time. Once you wait out the ini­tial price de­prec­a­tion caused by over­sup­ply you can sell your pro­duce in April or May when a bag goes for up to Sh3000,” ex­plains Al­fred.

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Stor­age is done in a floored, well-vent­il­ated room. Some spoil­age is to be ex­pec­ted though; about one out of every 100 pota­toes will go bad. The stor­age area should have a roof or the pota­toes covered, to avoid in­ad­vert­ently bak­ing them. When stored past five months pota­toes be­come scrawny and flac­cid de­pre­ci­at­ing their value.

To pre­pare an acre for plant­ing, Mweti hires a day’s la­bour force of 5 people, each paid Sh400. An acre of pota­toes con­sumes three bags of DAP fer­til­iser at plant­ing, each 50kg bag cost­ing Sh3000-2500.

Plow­ing is again done after a month for weed­ing when the pota­toes begin to sprout.

Earth­ling up is done de­pend­ing on the growth rate of your pota­toes –usu­ally after two to three weeks and helps to in­crease the sur­face area avail­able for tuber ex­pan­sion. At this point, top dress­ing is done with CAN, NPK or Urea fer­til­iser. A bag of top dress­ing fer­til­isers costs Sh2500 and three bags are needed to cater to an acre.

To com­bat suck­ing and chew­ing pests—mainly cater­pil­lars— es­pe­cially over the first one to two months when fo­liage first de­vel­ops Twiga Chem­ical’s Du­du­thrin is used.

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The main threat to pota­toes grown in the re­gion is late blight. If un­con­trolled, it greatly di­min­ishes out­put and can wipe out en­tire silos of stored pota­toes. This is con­trolled by weekly spray­ing with fun­gi­cides such as De­th­ane and Ridomil once leaf growth is ob­served, con­tinu­ing until flowers are formed and shed. One kilo­gram of De­th­ane costs Sh950 with two ta­ble­spoon fulls suited for one pump.

Fo­li­ars, which are li­quid fer­til­isers, are ap­plied to fo­liage and are com­pat­ible able to be mixed in with pesti­cides. They can be sprayed one to three times to en­hance growth. De­pend­ing on the stage of growth— which de­term­ines the num­ber and size of leaves three to five 20 liter pumps can be used for an acre.

Har­vest­ing is done after 70-120 days with every cas­ual laborer paid Sh200 for every 50-kilo­gram bag har­ves­ted. Pota­toes are graded from 1-4. Grade one is sold to con­sumers; two and three which can be clasped in a palm are used as the next sea­son’s seed­lings or sold to other farm­ers.

By George Munene
By con­struct­ing water reser­voirs farm­ers are able to save on wa­ter­ing costs as well as avoid re­li­ance on rain-fed ag­ri­cul­ture—al­low­ing them to pro­duce over the drier sea­sons when most ag­ri­cul­tural pro­duce is scarce and com­mod­ity prices are at their peak.
Timothy Mburu con­struc­ted his 50 mil­lion liter ca­pa­city dam on half an acre in 2011. It was 2015 be­fore he first sowed on his five-acre farm at Naro Moru, Nyeri County. Hav­ing not to rely on tap water and chan­nel­ing water into his farm through grav­ity, he has cut his pro­duc­tion costs by up to 60 per cent. For his cab­bages for ex­ample, his wa­ter­ing costs per acre is just Sh 3000—con­sti­tut­ing largely of la­bour. This is com­pared to the other farm­ers around him who spend Sh15,000-20000 on ir­rig­a­tion. “I do not cul­tiv­ate crops over the rainy sea­son—I tar­get my cul­tiv­a­tion over the drier June to Septem­ber months— that way my pro­duce hits mar­ket when the sup­ply is lower than de­mand,” says Mburu.
The dam also doubles up as a fish pond, host­ing tilapia and cat­fish which he sells for an extra in­come.
“As a ca­reer ag­ri­cul­tur­al­ist trained in crop pro­duc­tion and water re­source man­age­ment, I had an acute un­der­stand­ing of how im­port­ant it was be­fore any­thing else, being that farm­ing is a wa­ter-in­tens­ive un­der­tak­ing, that I have a re­li­able source of water. My dam en­sures I have clean water for both crop ir­rig­a­tion (cab­bages, pota­toes and gar­lics) as well as wa­ter­ing my an­im­als (15 cows and 20 sheep) throughout the year.” he says.

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For Caleb Karuga hav­ing a water pan on his farm was a no-brainer. In 2010 he had been hav­ing major water prob­lems and farm­ing on leased land, he could not sink a bore­hole or well. On his farm at Kikuyu sub-county, he’s set up a 144,000 liters pond; a do it your­self pro­ject that cost him Sh43,000—Sh20,000 in labor costs and an ad­di­tion Sh23,000 in buy­ing a dam liner. “I would have had to buy 14 plastic tanks with 10,000 liter ca­pa­city at a cost of Sh980,000 to har­vest the same amount of water. I tap water from my goat shed and gut­ters on my chicken coop which is all fed into the reser­voir. The pond has made me an un­wit­ting fish and bee farmer be­sides keep­ing my farm ir­rig­ated for three to four months, “he ex­plains.
It has also cre­ated his own ma­gical oasis, a cyc­lic eco­sys­tem that be­gins with the rain­wa­ter wash off de­pos­ited from the goat’s shed full of ni­tro­gen­ous waste. To this, he adds chicken ma­nure to provide the per­fect fish breed­ing ground. He is also now got into duck rear­ing—they also provide ma­nure, spur­ring phyto­plank­ton growth giv­ing his fish even more food. This ‘im­proved rain­wa­ter’ provides readymade li­quid ma­nure for his ve­get­ables, lu­cerne for his goats, sweet potato vines, straw­ber­ries and maize. He is now even able to ‘zero graze’ his own bees which have a read­ily avail­able water source mean­ing they do not have to wander.
To con­struct his dam Mburu spent Sh1.2 mil­lion—an ex­or­bit­ant amount given that when he built it in 2011 dams were still a novel idea for most farm­ers; re­source mo­bil­iz­a­tion in terms of get­ting a gov­ern­ment-owned ex­cav­ator to his site took him al­most a month and cost him Sh12,000 to run every hour. With an eight hour work­shift the pro­ject was com­pleted in 26 days. “Today you can hire the same ma­chinery at half the cost and with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of private com­pan­ies of­fer­ing ex­cav­ator ser­vices you do not have to spend the Sh100,000 I did just to get the bull­dozer and its per­son­nel to my farm, “he points out.

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On an­other five acres he re­cently ac­quired, he’s worked to con­struct a 110 000 liter water pan on an eighth of an acre. With his worn ex­per­i­ence this has cost him just Sh20,000 in hired labor. He is work­ing on pro­gress­ively in­creas­ing it to sit on half an acre, with a 20-30 mil­lion liter water hold­ing ca­pa­city.
His 50 mil­lion liter dam sits on half an acre but the water con­sumes just ¼ of this with the rests con­sti­tut­ing com­pacted walls. The walls are four meters high above the ground with a slanted depth of three meters—this is done to re­duce the wall pres­sure to pre­vent the dam from burst­ing. At the top of his walls, he grows tough grass such as Kikuyu which spreads by pro­du­cing a thick mat or thatch above the soil sur­face which im­proves com­pat­ib­il­ity pre­vent­ing soil erosion. Trees should not be grown on the dam’s walls as their roots will crack into the dam’s walls to sip water.
A water reser­voir should be set up out of the dir­ect site of run­ning water and the im­pact of on­rush­ing water re­duced by put­ting up de­tours that re­duce the ve­lo­city of on­rush­ing water.
Mburu does not con­trol for evap­or­a­tion; “Not once have I ever run out of water—50 mil­lion liters can ir­rig­ate a 10-acre farm for 90 days— the ger­min­a­tion time for most crops— if some 100,000 liters is lost through evap­or­a­tion, that is neg­li­gible,” he says.
Caleb urges Kenyan farm­ers to con­sider water har­vest­ing as es­sen­tial to crop pro­duc­tion and not just as a way of tap­ping water for human and an­imal con­sump­tion.