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    New maize vari­ety triples yields,with­stands harsh weather

    Small­holder farm­ers over re­li­ance on seed vari­et­ies from as early as 1930’s has been blamed for the con­tin­ued yield dip which has fur­ther fanned the hun­ger cycle, but private com­pan­ies are com­ing to the res­cue of farm­ers with mod­ern vari­et­ies cap­able of with­stand­ing chan­ging weather pat­terns.

    Seed vari­et­ies from the 30s could pro­duce upto 30 bags of maize in an acre of land. The same seeds nowadays can only pro­duce a mea­ger 10 bags. The ripple ef­fect has been a hun­ger cycle that has been fanned over the dec­ades. Private com­pan­ies aware of this sorry state of af­fairs have stepped in to save the day. Elgon Kenya is one such com­pany. It has col­lab­or­ated with re­search­ers to un­veil Elgon Prestige 02 maize vari­ety that has more than doubled farm­ers yields.

    The maize vari­ety which has prom­ised to re­vo­lu­tion­ize maize pro­duc­tion in the coun­try, is res­ist­ant to vir­tu­ally all maize dis­eases, is high yield­ing com­pared to tra­di­tional vari­et­ies and grows well in all soil types and cli­matic con­di­tions.
    The vari­ety which has suc­cess­fully grown in many parts of the coun­try has re­cor­ded im­press­ive yields pro­du­cing 90 kgs per acre. Other vari­et­ies pick between 50-60kgs. It takes 3 months for the maize to ma­ture with the dried cob being ready for har­vest in four months.

    It has also been hailed by in­dustry play­ers for its high grain qual­ity which is good for stor­age and sweet in taste.
    But even more su­per­ior is its abil­ity to weather major maize dis­eases and pests es­pe­cially the vo­ra­cious stem borer which des­troys over 40 per­cent of farm­ers’ yields. No other maize vari­ety has man­aged to counter the dev­ast­at­ing ef­fects of the stem borer.

    As the Kenyan farm­ers grapple with what maize vari­ety to plant where, which has ul­ti­mately af­fected yields, Elgon Prestige 02 has come with the as­sur­ance to farm­ers of that they can ex­pect bumper har­vests ir­re­spect­ive of the soils. Dam­aris Mworia a cer­eal farmer and sup­plier of maize to major ho­tels and maize factor­ies in Na­k­uru has known noth­ing but misery in the last five years. From strange maize dis­eases that swept her en­tire maize har­vest in 2012, to failed rains in re­cent har­vests, Mary was forced to can­cel her sup­plies and con­cen­trate on other ven­tures. From pro­du­cing over 20 bags of maize which fetched her over Sh60,000 she was re­duced to earn­ing a paltry Sh10,000.

    All that changed after at­tend­ing a Farm­ers Open day or­gan­ized by Elgon Kenya where she learnt about the Prestige 02 vari­ety. Agree­ing to try it al­beit half heartedly, Dam­aris pre­pared her land. True to Elgon Kenya’s ag­ro­nom­ist word, she has found a gold­mine in farm­ing. Not only has she re­claimed her yields but she has also doubled them. “It was utter shock and dis­be­lief when I planted the Elgon Prestige vari­ety. The long lush of tower­ing green maize plant­a­tions with huge maize cobs was a sight I have not seen. What sur­prised me more was the fact that I never even spent a dime in pest con­trol. The maize crop just grew and grew and grew, strong and healthy,” said Dam­aris who has now re­vived his cer­eals sup­ply busi­ness. In the last har­vest, she has man­aged to earn Sh90,000 from the sale of the maize. 

    The maize is at­tract­ing coun­try­wide de­mand as dwind­ling sup­ply cre­ates food short­age, in a coun­try where an av­er­age Kenyan con­sumes 98 kilo­grams of maize. But ac­cord­ing to the Food and Ag­ri­cul­tural Or­gan­iz­a­tion of the United Na­tions, Kenya's maize pro­duc­tion ranges between 24and 33­mil­lion bags per year against an es­tim­ated de­mand of 45­mil­lion bags an­nu­ally.

    In the last sea­son for ex­ample, farm­ers har­ves­ted 28.9 mil­lion bags of maize, against a pro­jec­tion of 43.4 mil­lion bags for the 2013/14 crop sea­son cre­at­ing a 14 mil­lion bags de­fi­cit or one third short­fall in pro­duc­tion given an an­nual na­tional con­sump­tion of between 40 mil­lion and 43.5 mil­lion bags.

    And with Kenya’s pop­u­la­tion pro­jec­ted to grow to 43.1 mil­lion by 2020, the de­mand for maize is ex­pec­ted to soar to five mil­lion met­ric tonnes, and therein lies the prob­lem. “We can­not con­tinue to grow the same vari­et­ies, using the same tra­di­tional prac­tices even as pop­u­la­tion bur­geons and the size of land de­creases. We need to farm smart if we are to save ourselves from the yoke of hun­ger,” said Nel­son Maina of Elgon Kenya.

    The new maize vari­ety is avail­able at Sh350 for a 2kg pack. It is avail­able across the coun­try where Elgon Kenya Ltd has over 400 stock­ists.

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