Smart farms

: 22 June 2017; Hits: 10743

Surrogate mother brooding increases egg laying frequency

A brooding chicken. Kiambu farmer uses one chicken to brood others' chicks to increase the laying frequency. Photo by Pinterest.

Instead of having three or more chickens brooding chicks for more than one month after hatching, Ignatius Osoro is using a surrogate mother to free the others to return to the cycle of laying eggs.

Chicks require warmth for the first one month to support the growth of feathers to help in body temperature regulation.

Commercially, other farmers use bulbs, stoves, lanterns and other sources to supply heat for 24 hours a day to the chicks at this critical stage of growth.

Given that Osoro’s target is local breeds, he prefers using one of the mothers of the chicks in the brooding process.

Currently one of the mothers is taking care of 46 chicks that are less than one month old. They were hatched by three chickens and their age difference is two days.

“Although my chickens are local and free-range, I feed them on commercial feeds to supplement the little food they pick while moving around.

“If a mother is freed a day after incubation, she can start laying eggs in about two weeks. If she were to remain in taking care of the chicks, laying of eggs may start after two or three months,” the Kamanga farmer said.

But the selection of the best mother that can take care of the chicks is based on its history. The current mother hatched 17 out of 23 eggs. It was the best among the three. Previously, it also raised 24 out of 26 chicks it had hatched.

“This chicken is more than two kilos. It also has the body mass and feathers to generate enough warmth besides the feathers. As the chicks grow, they remain in the brooding cage, which is sealed, but well ventilated to allow for free circulation of air especially at night,” he said.

The tightly fenced compound is about 50 feet by 100 feet. But he has more than 40 mature chickens. Apart from the sukuma wiki he has planted for the chickens, he also offers them commercial feeds.

They lay between 250 and 300 eggs per year, with some being better at laying, hatching and brooding.

In December 2016, the Kiambu County farmer sold more than 70 chickens for meat. Hens and cocks fetched Sh1,200 and Sh1,500 each respectively.

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: 20 June 2017; Hits: 7736

Information can increase access to fertiliser subsidy

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Fertiliser being offloaded at the Port of Mombasa. Information gap is hindering access to subsidised fertiliser. Photo by Business Daily.

Despite the government spending more than Sh20 billion in importation of over half a million tonnes of fertiliser for subsidy for about four years to spur productivity, farmers are unfamiliar with the intricate process of accessing the cheaper input as they remain targets of middlemen exploiting the information gap.

From the use of the local administrators like chiefs in profiling farmers in respect to need to the introduction of the electronic subsidy management system, the distribution of the fertiliser has remained unreachable for the deserving people since its launch in 2013.

The Ministry of Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Willy Bett in March this year blamed the extensive vetting process of farmers before accessing the cheaper input from the nearest National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) depot. He insisted that vetting is key to root out cheats.

Subsidised DAP fertiliser is sold at Sh1,800 per bag of 50 kilogrammes. Private agro-dealers are selling the same fertiliser at between Sh2,700 and Sh3,200 depending on the place. The fertiliser is mainly distributed ahead of the planting season. Other fertilisers such as urea and CAN have different selling prices under the subsidy.

“Some businessmen posing as farmers are getting the fertiliser to resell. That is what we want to do away with (in the vetting process),” the minister said.

With the application of the quota, the NBPB releases only 40 bags per farmer.

But Patrick Njenga, a farmer in Kiambu County, received one out of the five bags he applied for in March this year. And he paid Sh2,300 to the ‘appointed agent’ after delivery to his Kimende farm.

Njenga said giving farmers less than they requested for still exposes them to the cartels, who may be running parallel businesses with insiders on the subsidised input.

After a telephony supported pilot project, the government announced last year that the farmers are required to register online through the electronic management system with their telephone numbers to access the fertiliser.

After an online vetting, they fill their details into the database to receive a unique code, which they use to access the commodity. Allocation is pegged on the profile of the farmer in the database.

The Safaricom Limited Company’s system allow for farmers to place requests and after receiving the input, they can be tracked to limit reselling.

The management module also captures the input suppliers countrywide with a timely show of stocks available in the various outlets for quick action in case of an anticipated depletion.

Registration is done via the Ministry of Agriculture’s e-services portal. After the farmer has entered their telephone number, they receive a password via short message service for logging in.

Ezekiel Ndege, another farmer from Nyamira County, said the online system is little known by the small-holders, leaving a gap for the ‘elite farmers’ to amass as much as possible to resell. Besides, the tracking system may not be fool-proof after the farmer has got the input.

“If the government estimates that 10,000 farmers in Nyamira County are to benefit from 100,000 bags, and only 500 apply for 10,000 bags through the online system, the remaining is prone to abuse as the elites will apply for more, which they resell at higher prices,” he said.

This also happens to farmers who are far away from the appointed distribution points as they prefer buying expensively from local private suppliers than incurring transportation costs from an NCPB that is 50km away.

Although maize was the initial crop targeted by the programme, more other crops such as tea and sugarcane are being included. DAP is often given during the planting season, with maize being grown from the beginning of very year to around April depending on the rains.

Kenya has reached an average of 20 kilogrammes of fertiliser per acre against the global recommended application rate of 54 kilogrammes over the same piece of land. This is higher than the Sub-Saharan Africa average application rate of seven kilos per acre.

Apart from the fertiliser, other inputs like seeds can be bought at subsidised prices at the designated outlets like the State-owned Kenya Seed Company Limited shops.

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: 16 June 2017; Hits: 8876

Sharing information with farmers bolsters production

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Farmers read a text message on a mobile phone. Godan says access to information can help farmers rise above poverty and hunger. Photo by Ars Technica.

Global agriculture stakeholders have agreed to collect, process and make information available to farmers through tailored channels to bolster food security and make the sector an income source for the small-holders.

Small scale farming in Africa, and indeed other developing world, is for subsistence. However, a limited number of farmers are penetrating into commercialising small-scale agriculture.

Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) Chief Executive Officer Andrè Laperrière said yield boosting researches and other productive material are inaccessible to farmers, who are still stuck in old methods.

“Kenya’s neighbour, Ethiopia adopted a farmers’ automated information hotline that is delivering critical information in real time. Given that the government supports the system, it is counted credible and farmers are feeling the change in increased productivity,” the CEO said on the sidelines of the global conference in Nairobi.

In avoiding the challenge of information dissemination through new media like the internet failure, the 90 hotlines serve the farmers directly in Tigrinya, Amharic and Oromo – Ethiopia’s main languages.

The national production yield increased by more than 0.5million tonnes in the first year of implementation of the programme.

According to the Guardian, a British newspaper, the hotline was advertised by the government on radio and by the end of three months after its launch in 2014, more than 1.5 million farmers had made 300,000 calls.

The Kenyan government still relies of extension officers, who and inaccessible to the farmers. Agripreneurs rely on extension services from private companies, which can charge more than Sh2,00 per session.

Instead of having segmented sources of information, GODAN seeks to make the data common, but also tailored to the respective countries to respond to the specific challenges that farmers face, he said.

“This is an effort to bring together collective action in ensuring food security is achieved by active and voluntary sharing of critical data pertaining to the field of agriculture and nutrition,” Laperrière said later in a joint inter-ministerial statement.

Kenya is already using various sponsored programmes to reach out to farmers through mobile telephony short message services (SMS), radio and TV programmes, but the multiple channels and sources of information may confuse farmers, hence the importance of synchronisation. A centralised dissemination system is key in meeting the various societal segments.

For the old farmers, dissemination of the information in local vernacular radio stations may be the most appropriate while social media and other online resources would benefit the youthful farmers, Laperrière said.

Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture Willy Bett said the sector accounts for more than 70 per cent of jobs and livelihoods in Africa, therefore, injecting critical information to the small-holders would cure poverty.

Data is critical for Africa to realise agriculture’s full potential as the surest path to an inclusive economic transformation, Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa President Agnes Kalibata said.

Access to such information could give farmers early warning of a looming catastrophe like drought so they prepare well on how they will irrigate the crops during that time. They will also make other decisions like growing drought tolerant crops to cushion themselves against losses.

Other issues that are critical to farmers include markets, controlling pests and diseases, where to find quality seeds, better crop ans animal husbandry services, among others.

The conference, which brought together more than 1,000 global delegates, took place when Kenya is stuck in a food crisis, as maize stocks run dry after a five month-long dry spell.

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