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    Kenyan farm­ers urged to grow in-de­mand nu­tri­tious, early-matur­ing beans

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    By George Munene

    Kenyan farm­ers are being urged to take up the grow­ing of in-de­mand fast matur­ing, dis­ease-res­ist­ant, and high-yield­ing zinc and iron-rich bean vari­et­ies. 

    These beans which were in­tro­duced to the mass mar­ket last year have been a hit with farm­ers and con­sumers alike. 

    They ma­ture in just 60 days com­pared to the usual 80-120 days. Yield over three tons an acre com­pared to two tons har­ves­ted from older vari­et­ies and are dis­ease and pest tol­er­ant. 

    They are fur­ther re­puted for their ef­fi­ciency in mois­ture util­isa­tion.  

    Ac­cord­ing to con­sumers they have great taste, cook in half the time taken by tra­di­tional beans, and have a low flat­u­lence. This means they fetch a premium in mar­kets.

    These biofor­ti­fied beans in­clude Nyota (avail­able through KALRO Katumani); An­gaza and Faida-- both de­veloped by the Cen­ter for In­ter­na­tional Trop­ical Ag­ri­cul­ture (CIAT); Kenya Madini and Kenya Ch­eupe de­veloped by the Uni­versity of Nairobi.

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    Ac­cord­ing to Dr. Be­atrice Kiage of the Food, Ag­ri­cul­ture and Nat­ural Re­sources Policy Ana­lysis Net­work (FAN­RPAN), these beans are cheap to pro­duce and highly ad­apt­able which could make them handy in Kenya’s fight against ‘hid­den hun­ger.

    “About 26 per cent of Kenya's pop­u­la­tion is stun­ted. This af­fects both phys­ical and men­tal de­vel­op­ment in chil­dren. It's been shown that the IQ levels of mal­nour­ished kids are 11 per cent lower than av­er­age and they earn 22 per cent less in­come as adults com­pared to their prop­erly nour­ished coun­ter­parts. We can­not prop­erly de­velop as a coun­try until we rem­edy this. 

    This can be done through the con­sump­tion of beans that are high in iron and zinc,” she said.

    Fur­ther, Iron de­fi­ciency is the major cause of an­emia which af­fects up to 43 per cent of Kenya’s under five-year-olds and 40 per cent of preg­nant women. 

    Zinc and Iron are also crit­ical in child cog­nit­ive de­vel­op­ment while Zinc helps pro­duce testoster­one. Low levels of Zinc may be as­so­ci­ated with erectile dys­func­tion. 

    The biofor­ti­fied beans have five times more iron and zinc com­pared to biofor­ti­fied maize meal. 

    FAN­RPAN under the Ziron­Pulse Pro­ject is hold­ing farmer train­ing field days to guide farm­ers on the emer­gent chal­lenges in bean pro­duc­tion. 

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    “The main chal­lenge fa­cing most farm­ers is cli­mate change. Pre­vi­ously farm­ers used to grow high-alti­tude crops but have been forced to scale down to dry­land crops. Low­land pests such as aph­ids and white­flies have also in­vaded Kenya’s high­lands as have dis­eases such as blight be­cause of the high di­urnal tem­per­at­ure ranges within our zone,” said Kieni East sub-county ag­ri­cul­tural of­ficer Car­oline Mwenze.

    At 6,000Mt, Kenya is Africa’s second-largest bean pro­du­cer be­hind Rwanda but still faces a sup­ply de­fi­cit of 1,000Mt. Most of this is made up of tra­di­tional vari­et­ies like Ro­se­coco, Wairimu, and Chelalang. 

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