Kenyan Ban On GM Crops To Be Lifted

Genetically modified organism (GMO) crops and products soon will be allowed in Kenya, where a ban on the technology has been in place since 2012.

While Kenya has made significant progress on GMOs in terms of enacting watertight regulations and controlled research on crops such as Bt maize, Bt cotton, cassava, sorghum, and sweet potato, the ban has meant the country cannot progress to the commercialization stage.

For the East African nation the move toward lifting the ban is timely and well informed. It comes hot on the heels of widespread studies that have validated the safety of GM crops and repudiated the Seralini paper, the controversial study by Gilles-Eric Seralini that alleges GMOs cause cancer and which Kenya used in justifying the ban.

For Kenya, lifting the ban would mean the country is only the fourth nation in Africa to allow commercialization of GM crop, following South Africa, Sudan, and Nigeria.

South Africa allows for food crops in the form of biotech maize, soybeans, and cotton, while Sudan allows biotech cotton. Nigeria has become the latest country to allow GM crops, with open cultivation of cotton and cowpea.

Full article...

Kenyan Farmers Abandon Food Crops to Grow Herbal Stimulant

At this time of year, Albert Njeru's farm would usually be blanketed with shoulder-high rows of maize.

But not anymore. Now the fields of grain are gone, replaced by 2 acres (0.80 hectares) of bushy green muguka leaves, a potent legal stimulant that relieves fatigue.

"Muguka gives me a lot of money. Farming maize or beans used to give me losses," said the 45-year-old farmer at his home in Kanyuambora, a village in central Kenya.

As drought and erratic weather wreak havoc across rural Kenya, a growing number of farmers are abandoning traditional crops like maize and rice for the more lucrative muguka.

Njeru can make 30,000 Kenyan shillings ($290) in just one week selling muguka - five times more than he used to make selling maize or beans.

"It is green gold," he said.

A variety of khat, which produces a mild high when chewed, muguka is fast-growing, making it less vulnerable to large swings in weather conditions, and uses about half as much water as maize, Njeru explained.

The strain grown in Embu County, home to Njeru's farm, is strong and so consumers can buy less than with the other popular variety, miraa, which is grown further north in Meru. That is good news for muguka producers like Njeru, who said he was struggling to cultivate enough to keep up with demand.

But it is bad news for food supplies, said agriculture experts and local politicians, who warned of a potential food crop shortage as farmers clear their fields of staples to make way for muguka.

"Farmers are not interested in growing maize anymore. They want money in their pockets. Muguka is giving them that and a lot more, since they can use the profits to buy more nutritious food," said Martin Mwangi, a member of Embu County's assembly.

"But the long-term consequences could lead to food insecurity due to reduced production."

He pointed to neighbouring Kirinyaga County, where farmers are known for growing Kenya's highest-quality rice.

"Water used for irrigating rice is now being diverted into muguka fields," he cautioned.

DRUGS OR FOOD?

There is no official record of how many farmers have switched from growing food crops to muguka, said Mwangi. Nor is there data on how much land is being used for muguka, according to Kenya's Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA).

But Francis Kimori, chairman of the Mbeere Muguka Farmers Sacco, a savings and credit cooperative, estimated four out of every five households around the Mount Kenya region, including in Embu County, are farming the stimulant in some quantity.


Many have upgraded from mud huts to modern stone houses, he said. "It is changing livelihoods," he added.

Factors like failing rains and new pests, linked to climate change, have likely played a role in muguka's popularity at the expense of time-honoured crops such as maize, said Dickson Kibata, a technical officer at the AFA. Yet despite the extra income muguka brings, Kibata warned against relying solely on the narcotic plant.

"Cash-crop farming cannot be the silver bullet that will pull farmers out of poverty, because consumption patterns keep changing," he said by phone. "My advice to muguka farmers is to mix it with food crop farming to ensure the family food basket is secure, even as they look for money."

FOREST WARNING

Environmentalists and lawmakers have also voiced concerns over the impact of the stimulant cultivation boom on forests.

Every few months, the Atiriri Bururi ma Chuka community conservation group in Tharaka Nithi County reports several locals illegally growing an edible form of cannabis known as bhang in local forests, said its chairman Ngai M'Uboro. He expects it is only a matter of time before he and his colleagues start uncovering muguka farming in the area.

"If the forest is already suffering because of grazing and bhang, it will not be long before we see muguka growing in the forest," he said.

Muguka's potency is also making the authorities uncomfortable. In 2018, legislators in Mombasa and Kwale counties lobbied unsuccessfully for a sales and consumption ban on muguka over fears of addiction among young people.

The National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse supported the move, citing social and health worries.

"Muguka is worse than hard drugs because of its highly addictive nature. It is ruining homes, the country's youth and should be banned," said Victor Okioma, its chief executive.

SUPERMARKET SHELVES?

Yet, even with all the risks attached to muguka, many Kenyan farmers are hoping it will save their livelihoods.

Along a 300-km (185-mile) stretch of cropland from the edges of the capital Nairobi to the lowlands opening into northern Kenya, maize farmers have been struggling with drought.

Purity Muthoni, 32, a farmer from Kiriani village in central Kenya, said she would not hesitate to switch to muguka if she could. But the weather and soils where she lives, some 150 km from Njeru, are not suitable for growing the plant, she said.

Noting the risks of depending on one crop as a source of income, the Embu County government last year said it would start distributing macadamia and avocado seeds to farmers to help them diversify their cash crops.

But Njeru is not convinced any other crop can earn him the same returns he gets from muguka. If local leaders really wanted to help farmers, he said, they should find ways to add value to the plant by enhancing their access to industrial processing and retail opportunities.

"I will be very happy the day I see packaged muguka being sold in supermarkets as a quality-assured product," he said.

($1 = 102.9000 Kenyan shillings)

Original article...

Kenyan Farmers Grow Maize For Animal Feeds Amid Changing Climate

About a decade ago, maize was mainly grown in Kenya as a food crop, with the cereal being the east African nation’s staple. Over the years, however, many farmers are growing the crop for animal feeds in a shift prompted by the changing climatic conditions.

While some of the farmers, who are dairy keepers, are growing the crop to feed their herd, others are farming it for sale in what has turned out to be a more profitable business.

The rains in Kenya have become extremely erratic, affecting maize growing which is mainly rain-fed in the east African nation. This year, for instance, the long rain season in Kenya that usually lasts for three months from March to May was barely a month long, according to the Meteorological Department. This affected maize planting, with most of the crop in the country’s breadbaskets of western and Rift Valley currently at tussling stage instead of being harvested.

In other regions, however, most of the crop failed due to low rains. But farmers who plant the crop for making animal feeds – mainly silage – harvest at an early stage thus avoid ending up with a failed crop due to erratic weather.

Maize prices currently stand at an average of 3,500 shillings (about 33 U.S. dollars) for a 90kg bag but prices normally decline to as low as 10 dollars when most farmers harvest.

... the early harvesting saves farmers the cost of fighting pests, harvesting, drying and storing the grain before transporting it to the market for sale.

Maize is harvested for making silage at four months when their seeds are soft, but not milky if squeezed open. If harvested at the right stage, the crop has more starch than sugar.

Full article...

Kenya: Biofuel From Cotton Waste

Kenyan farmer Abel Mutie Mathoka thought it must be a joke when he was told he could irrigate his drought-hit crops more cheaply, cleanly and efficiently using a pump fuelled by cotton waste.

"Who could believe it's possible to make a fuel better than diesel from cotton seeds? I didn't!" laughed Mathoka, crouching down to inspect the watermelons on his 10-acre (four-hectare) shared plot in Ituri village in Kenya's southeast Kitui county.

"But it works," he said, walking over to a nearby tree and plucking a large green pawpaw. "Irrigation with this biodiesel water pump has helped me get higher yields, especially during drought periods."

Mathoka said his earnings had doubled in the two years he has been pumping water using biodiesel, which is both more efficient and 20 shillings ($0.20) per litre cheaper than regular diesel.

Unlike most biofuels, which are derived from crops such as maize, sugarcane, soybean, rapeseed and jatropha, it is made from a byproduct of the cotton-making process. That means that as well as being cleaner and cheaper than regular fuel, it is more sustainable than other biofuels because no extra land is needed to produce it.

From Brazil to Indonesia, the rush to cultivate biofuel crops has driven forest communities off their land and pushed farmers to switch from crops-for-food to more profitable crops-for-fuel - exacerbating food shortages.

"Our biodiesel comes from crushing cotton seeds left over as waste after ginning - the process of separating the seeds from raw cotton," said Taher Zavery, managing director of Zaynagro Industries Ltd, the Kitui-based company producing the biodiesel.

"We started producing and using it to power our cotton ginning factory in 2011. With increased production, we now use it for our trucks, sell it to the United Nations to run some of their buses - and also to local farmers for irrigation."

More than 1,200 farmers in Kitui have so far invested in biodiesel pumps for irrigation as part of an initiative launched by Zaynagro in 2015, said Zavery.

A small but growing number are shedding their burden of reliance on the weather - and investing in irrigation systems powered by Zaynagro's cotton seed biodiesel through a pay-as-you-go scheme launched more than three years ago.

Neighbouring farmers band together to invest in the irrigation system - which includes the biodiesel pump, 12 metres of pipes and 10 litres of biodiesel - at costs starting from 32,000 shillings (1US$=KES103; July 2019), depending on the size of the pump.

The farmers make an initial payment, then pay interest-free monthly instalments until the total is paid off. They buy the biodiesel to run the pumps from Zaynagro at Ksh80 ($0.8) a litre.

Full article...

Kenya: Fruit Juice Maker Invests US$5 Million To Increase Capacity

Fruits juice maker Del Monte Kenya has invested Sh580 million (1US$=KES103; July 2019) in a new fresh fruit packing facility with a processing capacity of 60 tonnes of fresh fruit per year.

The new facility, which is being constructed within Del Monte Kenya’s plantation is scheduled to be completed in August 2019 to expand production of pineapples avocados, mangos and passion fruit juices.

“Del Monte Kenya plans to source fruit from local and regional growers in Murang’a and Kiambu Counties, we will prepare and package the products from the new facility for both local and international markets,” said Del Monte managing director Stergios Gkaliamoutsas.

He said the expansion drive is the company’s way of celebrating 70 years of operations in the country and is expected to create 200 new direct jobs.

Del Monte Kenya employs over 6,500 employees and creates additional 28,000 jobs indirectly through its activities. The company houses half of its workforce within the company’s premises.

Full article...

Illicit Imports Add To Kenyan Farmers' Competitiveness Challenges

Agricultural products between Kenya and its neighbours in the East African Community can be traded duty-free. However, collusion between traders and border officials is suspected to also result in the illegal duty-free import of large quantities of commodities from outside the EAC.

This compounds the problems Kenyan farmers face, which include relatively low productivity.  

Article...

Rain Failure Worsens Armyworm Attack On Kenyan Maize Farms

This is the third year in a row that the pest is attacking maize in the east African nation, with agriculture experts noting that the vagaries of climate change are getting worse.
The armyworm attack is expected to be worse this season due to insufficient rainfall, according to agricultural experts. This is because the current dry weather following failed rains offers perfect conditions for the fall armyworms to reproduce and spread faster to other areas.

Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization, a government agency, has warned that this year’s armyworm invasion would be worsened by the erratic rainfall.

Besides pesticides, the ministry of agriculture is advising farmers through an SMS service to use ash and even soapy water to eliminate the pests.

Full article...

Kenya: Lower Nzoia River Irrigation Project Works Begin

The Kenyan authorities have recently started work on the lower Nzoia River irrigation project site after more than a year's delay. The work, costing a total of 7 billion shillings ($70 million), was awarded to China's hydroelectric engineering and construction company, Sinohydro, which was selected in 2017.

The work will consist of the development and rehabilitation of an existing dyke on the Nzoia River, as well as building another 35 km long dyke.

The Lower Nzoia Irrigation Project also includes the construction of a concrete diversion weir, a 135 m connecting channel and a 2.7 km channel. Funding is provided by Kenya’s central government, with the support of the World Bank.

It is a project that will protect the populations of Siaya and Busia counties from “persistent flooding”, and it will be crucial for local agriculture, especially fruit cultivation. The cultivation of cereals such as rice will be the highlight of this agriculture. Farmers in the Rift Valley will be able to alternate this water-intensive crop with soya beans.

The Kenyan government also estimates that the exploitation of the waters of the Nzoia River will be a springboard for the extension of the area of irrigated plantations by more than 4,000 hectares. At present, the irrigated plantations in the project area have an area of less than 1,000 hectares. In the near future, the government also plans to set up a rice-processing plant in the region.

The actual start of work on the Lower Nzoia Irrigation Project, however, is the result of intense negotiations between the central government and the people affected by the project in Trans-Nzoia County, who were claiming 1.2 billion Kenyan shillings (close to $12 million) in compensation. Their opposition to the project caused a delay of more than a year. The government eventually gave in to their demands.

Full article...

Kenya: Human Waste Used To Grow High-Protein Livestock Feed

by Hereward Holland

,Kenyan farmer Victor Kyalo's chickens have doubled the number of eggs they are laying. The reason: Human excrement.

He is feeding them food from a Nairobi-based organics recycling company. Sanergy harvests waste from toilets it operates in a franchise network in Nairobi's sprawling slums and feeds it to fly larvae, which become high-quality animal feed.

Kyalo says his customers have noticed the difference in the past three weeks: yellower yolks and larger eggs. "Before we were getting like five trays (of eggs) per day, but now we are getting 10," Kyalo said. "It’s kind of perfect for me."

...businesses harvesting insects -- either for human consumption or as animal feed -- are growing. They promote themselves as a greener alternative to traditional feed such as soybeans, whose cultivation can lead to deforestation and the overuse of farm chemicals.

Fast food giant McDonald’s and U.S. agricultural powerhouse Cargill Inc are among many large companies studying using insects for chicken feed to reduce reliance on soy protein in the $400 billion-a-year animal feed business.

By 2023 the global edible insect market could triple to $1.2 billion from current levels, market research firm Meticulous Research said last year.

In developing countries like Kenya, where the World Bank says nearly two-thirds of urbanites live in slums, feeding waste to fly larvae could solve both sanitation and nutrition problems.


Faeces from more than two-thirds of Nairobi's inhabitants go untreated because there are not enough toilets. Many others are not cleaned out regularly, Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company said.
During the rains, they often overflow, polluting local waterways. That can make workers ill. Days off slow Kenya's economy by around 1% annually, its Health Ministry said.

David Auerbach co-founded Sanergy eight years ago to deal with sanitation. The waste management franchise provides more than 2,500 toilets to 100,000 people daily.

Beds of writhing black soldier fly larvae feast on a mix of excrement and food waste from hotels and agri-businesses. That produces two products for farmers: fertiliser and animal feed.

In 10 days the larvae munch their way through 70% of the waste, leaving behind a manure laden with nitrogen and calcium, which becomes organic fertiliser.

Once the recycling plant is expanded later this year, Auerbach said it will provide 400 tonnes of fertiliser. Larvae production will ratchet up from 7 tonnes to 300 tonnes per month.

The plump white larvae are boiled in hot water to kill off pathogens, Michael Lwoyelo, managing director of Sanergy, said. The larvae are then sold to animal feed millers, who grind them into powder mixed with other ingredients to create a balanced diet for poultry, pigs and fish.

Frederick Wangombe, an animal nutritionist at Unifeed, a Kenyan animal feed miller that uses Sanergy's black soldier fly product, envisages it replacing fish meal from Lake Victoria, which can contain sand and other impurities, or expensive soy beans from Zambia.

"The egg farmer doesn't want to know what's in the feed, they want to know the performance," he said. (US$1 = 101.1000 Kenyan shillings)

Full article...

Farming by cellphone remote control: Fascinating, but is it realistic?

The widespread and fairly sudden reach of mobile communications to even the remotest areas of most parts of Africa have revolutionised life in many ways, opening up many new possibilities that would have been unthinkable as recently as 20 years ago.

As the ability of cellphones to bridge distance and communication gaps have come to be taken for granted, more attention is being to using the technology in more targeted, practical ways. Just one successful example is how cellphone telephony has exposed tens of millions of  people to money transfer and banking services that were previously largely out of their convenient reach.

Another purpose of cellphone to which there has been much attention paid in recent years has been in delivering useful market and technical information to farmers in scattered, often remote areas. It is fairly early days in these efforts, part there are some reports of success in delivering information to farmers by cellphone on matters like market trends and prices, weather or other information. Many of these efforts have been based on inexpensive short message services (SMS) or some kind of simple subscription model.

Now come reports of more ambitious efforts, such as "telephone farmers,"...making use of a growing number of technologies and platforms to help them choose and manage their crops more efficiently" from a distance through availing on-farm information by smartphone.

Apparently, 'cloud farming' is a new phenomenon in which mobile devices are giving a growing number of Kenyan farmers the ability to do 'keep an eye on their out-of-town farms while working in the city.'

An interesting report says 'IBM's EZ-Farm project - currently being trialled in Kenya - is exploring how sophisticated data analytics can help farmers keep in touch with what is really happening on their out-of-town smallholdings. Sensors strategically placed around the farm monitor water tank levels, the amount of moisture in the soil, as well as the performance of irrigation equipment.'

No doubt there will be interesting and  perhaps even some practically useful lessons from these fascinating experiments delving into how to make widely available cellphones more useful. However, one skeptics experience tells him that for success in particularly small to medium scale farming, there are few or no substitutes for a physical experience!

The nature of small to medium scale farming is such that if you need a cellphone app to 'indicate whether crops are being watered too much or too little,' then your farming operation is likely in trouble on many other counts not related to how much water is or isn't in the soil. Small scale farming, especially if it is to be commercially viable, is generally a very hands-on enterprise by its very nature.

But hey, at the very least this new technology will give urban cell phone farmers with weekend plots in the rural areas some new app on  their smartphones to show off and boast about to their drinking buddies in the capital city.

Different context from Kenya perhaps, but in Zimbabwe the expression 'cellphone farmer' is not used admiringly to refer to a town-based farmer who has the details of the goings-on of his distant 'farm or plot at his finger-tips (or rather, on on his/her cellphone's screen), but is rather used derisively to distant, clueless and uninvolved salaried urbanites who think that claiming to be also a farmer (in their spare) time is cute and 'prestigious.' At best they will drive out to their farms on weekends or month ends to barbeque some meat and enjoy cold beers before driving back to the capital on Sunday afternoon, refreshed for the new week from their strenuous 'farming activities.'

While dumb phones are now available in virtually every outpost, the availability of smart phones, while now growing exponentially, is still much more limited. Part of this may may be data networks that are still far behind voice and SMS networks, but part of it is also that smartphones still cost considerably more than dumb phones.

But seriously though, there will likely eventually be some actually practically useful, real-world innovations from these experiments. As the scientist in charge says, "we're planning for the future."

African Agriculture

Kenya expects record maize harvest in 2012

Kenya is expecting to harvest a  record 38 million 90kg bags of maize in the current season despite the devastating effects of a disease that has destroyed thousands of hectares of the crop.

“General maize production has gone up from 30 million bags. We expect 38 million bags. Demand is 38--39 million,” said an agriculture ministry official.

Coastweek

As Kenya officially accepts GM technology, anti-GM activists shift focus to mandatory labeling

Kenya made big headlines in mid 2011 when the the government made it legal to import gene-modified maize. Many were surprised by the development but shouldn't have been. It was the culmination of several years of behind the scenes work at several levels to bring Kenya into the GM fold. In the next few years it is expected that the local cultivation of a number of GM crops, euphemistically said to be undergoing 'trials' for the last few years, will also be legalized.

This is a done deal from which there is no going back, but that doesn't mean that all Kenyans are happy about it. The legalization of GM maize imports was a stunning repudiation of the arguments of anti-GM activists. Having lost the battle to keep GM food and cultivation out, they have now moved their tactics to trying to push for mandatory labeling of GM food, the idea being that consumers can make an informed choice about what they consume. It is questionable whether any significant proportion of consumers in most countries worry about reading the ingredients-list on food they buy, but the anti-GM people can't be seen to have totally surrendered the fight. Besides, full disclosure of the contents of food sold to the public sounds like a perfectly reasonable enough demand, although the GM foods lobby in countries like the U.S. has been fiercely against such measures.     

An official of the African Biodiversity Network (ABN) has recently poked holes in the argument that the great East African drought and subsequent maize crisis in Kenya is what partly spurred the legalization of previously banned imports of GM maize.

Ann Maina asks why GM maize imports were allowed when Kenyan farmers in the country's maize surplus areas were not able to find markets for their crop during the national shortage of 2011. She also says the price of the imported GM maize was much higher than that of then locally available non-GM maize.

Maina's implication is that the the decision to allow imports of GM maize into Kenya had nothing to do with maize security concerns.

 In maize-dependent countries, the importation of this staple crop is often a fraught, controversial exercise often plagued with accusations of a long line of politically connected middle-men all wanting a piece of the action. In many countries, the longer the importation chain, the more opportunities for the many levels of middle-men to profit (and profiteer) from the process.

Maina also points out what she says are other irregularities about the GM maize importation decision and the process.

Writes Maina, 'In the US now, there is a big push to label GM foods and Kenya is also in the process of doing so. It is fundamental that we ensure our population have a right to choose the kind of food they want to eat. It is thus important that Kenya be not used as a dumping ground or human testing ground for GM varieties that have been rejected elsewhere.'

All these arguments are coming rather late in Kenya. For better or for worse, the local and international political and commercial forces allied together to put Kenya firmly in the GM camp have arguably won a victory that the anti-GM activists can do very little about now. It will be interesting to see if the calls for GM food labeling in Kenya make much headway, and if so, if they will make much difference to consumers.

African Agriculture 

New Kenya cashew sector revival plans revealed

Kenya's once lucrative cashew sector has been struggling under various problems for years. Now there is a new plan to try to revive it. The sector earned $3 million in 2010, compared to $35 million in 1992.

180,000 cashew seedlings are to be distributed annually to farmers for the next five years, along with other kinds of support. The Nut Processors Association of Kenya hopes the current annual production of 10,000 will go up four-fold by 2015.


However, as other African cashew producing countries like Guinea Bissau and Mozambique have discovered, breathing new life into the sector is easier said  than done. Most of their nuts are exported raw by Indian traders who process them in their country and on-export the final product from there. Attempts to discourage or ban exports of raw nuts have often simply driven away buyers, leaving farmers without markets for their produce. 

African Agriculture

Kenya tea output for 2012 at 360 million kgs

The Tea Board of Kenya says the country's output for 2012 is 360 million kg, 5% lower than the 2011 yield because of frost and late rains.

January to August exports dropped 6% to 214 million kg at an average price of $3.15 per kg, compared to $3 in the same period in 2011.

full article...Reuters

Kenyan research bodies clash over cause of Maize Lethal Necrosis

by Gatonye Gathura

The disease threatening to wipe out this year’s maize crop had by the end of August spread to four provinces.

A task force established by the government to look into the crisis says the disease, which was first reported in Bomet last year, has spread to Rift Valley, Nyanza, Eastern and Central provinces.

It has destroyed crops on more than 90,000 hectares, according to the task force which presented its findings for the first time in public on Thursday.

“Where the crops were infected when young, losses are up to 100 per cent, ” Dr Anne Wangai, a member of the task force and a senior researcher with the Kenya Agricultural Institute (Kari), said.

The report reveals glaring conflicts between what the researchers have found out and what the Ministry of Agriculture has been telling the public.

Dr Wangai says the disease is caused by two different viruses working in cahoots.

She told the annual Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa in Nairobi that extensive trials both locally and abroad had confirmed that the infection was a viral disease.

But a statement issued by Agriculture minister Sally Kosgei in June, and posted on the ministry’s website, said the disease was also caused by a fungus.

“Confirmed results now indicate the combination of disease causing pathogens as mainly viruses and fungi... a fungus has been detected as one of the pathogens involved in the disease complex,” the statement said.

However, independent research by Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate (Kephis) was categorical that the disease was caused by a fungus.

Following Dr Kosgei’s statement, Kephis managing director James Onsando changed position but maintained that this was a new disease caused by a combination of viruses and fungi.

Kephis are part of the task force investigating the disease; so are several seed companies.

“The minister’s statement does not contradict our findings,” Dr Onsando told Saturday Nation without elaborating further.

However, scientists at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) are also categorical that the disease is caused by a virus.

“A combination of two viruses has been confirmed to be responsible for the Maize Lethal Necrosis Disease. This fact is now well established,” Dr Fred Kanampiu of CMMYT said.

Asked why Kephis could have got it so wrong, if indeed they are wrong, Dr Wangai argued that just like HIV, where an infected person is easy target for opportunistic infections, this may have been the case.

“A plant infected by these viruses has low immunity and will succumb to other infections, including fungal,” she said.

But scientists, who did not want to be identified for fear of victimisation, attributed the conflicting findings to sibling rivalry between Kari and Kephis, with the minister choosing to appease both. “One is dead wrong and the government knows which one, but does not want to hurt anybody’s ego,” a source said.

But the confusion between facts, politics and commercial interests does not end there.

The government in its statement is also categorical that the disease is not transmitted through seeds.

“The disease affects all varieties of maize and we have confirmed that it is not seed borne,” Dr Kosgei said. “There is therefore no fear of spreading the disease through seed that is supplied by seed companies.”

But it has emerged that researchers have not established this as a fact. In fact they are screening seeds to determine whether they could be spreading the disease.

“We are conducting tests to verify seed transmission of viruses in local cultivars,” Dr Wangai said.

According to the task force report, a study done elsewhere in 1991 found seeds to be a possible transmission route.

Speaking on condition of anonymous, scientists attending the Thursday meeting and another one for science journalists in Nakuru a week ago, said seed companies afraid of compensating farmers and hurting their businesses are fighting against any attempt to link the disease with their products in spite of the facts.

While new in Kenya, Dr Wangai said the disease was first detected in Peru in 1973 and later in the US, Argentina and Mexico.

However, the report from Kephis suspects the disease to have originated from a maize seed production farm in Taveta, which had a similar problem in 2003.

Daily Nation

Maize Lethal Necrosis reduces yields for some Kenyan farmers by up to 60%

An apparently previously unknown-in-Kenya maize disease is reported to be ravaging the crop in the areas where it has been found. Dubbed maize lethal necrosis, it makes the crop turn yellow and dry up, but little is known about the mode of transmission.

Researchers at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization are worried about the disease but don’t yet know enough about it to make any specific recommendations to farmers.

However, reports from KARI offer hope that there are maize hybrids that are resistant to the virus that causes the disease. Farmers are also being encouraged to plant alternative crops in order to break the virus transmission cycle.

Since it was first reported in the Bomet County area in September 2011, maize lethal necrosis is said to have affected at an area of least 75,000 hectares.

African Agriculture

Do farming tips to farmers by cellphone make a big difference?

In the last few years there have been efforts all over Africa to link the explosive growth in cell phone availability with providing various services to farmers.

The latest such effort is one in which a development organization and one of Kenya's mobile phone carriers are said to have linked up to avail up to 250,000 farmers with information by cellphone SMS, short message service.

The farmers are to benefit from 'pertinent agriculture-related information, advice and research that will help them make better decisions about their crops, increasing the productivity of their yield, as well as their potential income.'

It sounds good, and airtime spent on SMS is a huge cash cow for mobile phone operators in Africa. At a few cents a message, it is accessible to even low income people and yet very profitable for the cell phone companies.

Just how useful are these services to farmers? The article in question here has few specifics. But when these initiatives they first began, one example that was given was how remote rural farmers could now know the price in distant towns of their crops, instead of having no choice but to accept the prices offered by traveling middlemen. However, using this example, just how much extra bargaining power does this give the farmer?

In this example, the farmer's problem may not be so much ignorance of the going prices of his/her crop in the big population centers where the markets are. A bigger problem may be lack of the ability to ferry his or her crop to those centers. The choice then is a stark one, particularly for perishable commodities-accept the price being offered by the traveling trader, or watch the crop rot. Knowing that the price hundreds of kilometers away is 50% higher than that being offered by the trader who is in the village with cash is neither much comfort nor much help.

Other information that has been touted in similar initiatives includes weather forecasts, technical information (e.g. how to deal with particular pests.)

There is certainly the potential for these services to be useful, but do they work as well as hyped? They are usually begun with much fanfare  and publicity, but there seems little follow to show the results after some months or years.

This particular Kenyan project is backed by USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 

African Agriculture    

Hard to interpret projected yield increases as GM maize seed gets closer to market in Kenya

In 2011 Kenya caused a storm in some circles by for the first time making legal the importation of gene-modified maize seed for consumption. This was arguably a step that could have been predicted years before, given the several (known) trials of various GM crops that have been taking place there for years.

In the new environment of a major anti-GM crops barrier having been breached, some of those trials are close to a stage where their products will soon be on the market.

The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute is one of the organizations that have been undertaking testing of GM crops, with the first GM maize seeds expected to be available to farmers by 2014.

Kenya’s The Nation newspaper reported KARI official Simion Gichuki as saying the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project was expected to increase yields from the current less than one tonne per hectare to as much as five tonnes per hectare.

Unfortunately, in almost all stories citing yield figures like this, it is not mentioned whether these projected increases are to be solely from the farmers switching from their present seeds to the fancy new seeds, or whether these figures also assume all other production conditions being ideal.

Obviously the test field conditions of KARI will be vastly different from the real world cultivation realities of most small scale Kenyan maize farmers. When all other conditions (planting date, water, soil fertility, fertilizer, pesticides, etc) are optimized as under field test conditions like presumably exist at KARI, a four of five yield might be realizable; even more. But if the only change a farmer makes in his cultivation conditions is to switch seeds, s/he is obviously not going to achieve the same yields as seen on the KARI maize test fields!

For claims of four or five fold yield increases to make sense, it is necessary to know if the test conditions used to cite them are those of a ‘typical’ Kenyan maize farmer, or whether they are idealized test conditions.

Apart from adopting a new variety of seed, if all the other real-world conditions of a farmer remain the same (erratic and declining rain, poor soil and no supplementation/fertilizer/pesticides, etc), are four to five-fold yield increases still to be expected?

Any improvement of yields would be welcome, even if it is not the four or five-fold, but one suspects that some of the figures given without context and explanation provided are a case of over-selling a product.

One also can’t help but get the impression that the claims of ‘testing’ these GM seeds are more a public relations exercise than a scientific enterprise. The political/regulatory decision to market them has already been made. The hoped-for yield increases are apparently already known.

So when Dr. Gethi says, “But the genetically modified maize will first be subjected to trials,” it seems to imply that there is still a possibility of them not being adopted if the results of those 'trials' warranted it.

But everything else that is said makes it clear that whatever is still being ‘trialed’ is certainly not going to have any impact on their coming to market. Clearly all that is being conducted in the ‘trials’ are a few small mopping up operations.

It is also said the government plant approval body will also evaluate the seeds for their ‘suitability.’ What are the chances of that body finding the seeds ‘unsuitable?’

What does it matter now, one may ask? In the Kenyan scenario, where the once difficult hurdle of government and/or public acceptability of GM crops seems to have been overcome, it probably doesn’t matter much. But it is this kind of sly ambiguity in giving figures and stating facts that makes many opponents of GM technology suspect that the ‘trials’ are actually no more than a marketing ‘conspiracy’ on behalf of American and a few European seed companies, rather than a great new innovation to turn poor farmers’ fortunes around.

Education assistant minister Ayiecho Olweny said, “Let us not pay a lot of attention to the activists; they will distract us from achieving food sustainability through such a modern technology.”

GM seeds have come to Kenya and there is clearly no going back, whatever the ‘trials’ may or may not show. As the biggest economy in the region, Kenya’s decision will have far-reaching effects on neighboring countries.

South Africa, the continent’s biggest producer of GM crops, is surrounded by several countries that are still reticent about accepting GM technology. But much of their resistance has been effectively neutralized by their large-scale importation of South African processed foods which contain GM ingredients.

If GM cultivation is a competitive advantage, those of South Africa’s neighbors that maintain bans on the cultivation of biotech crops find themselves in an awkward position. That is that they prohibit the growing of crops which their citizens are already eating anyway. Furthermore, those countries’ farmers and agri-processors find themselves unable to compete against the multiple advantages their South African counterparts enjoy over them, to which can be added the higher (though disputed by some) yields of GM technology.

Part of the result has been that it is already struggling farmers and processors in South Africa’s neighboring countries who are now putting pressure on their governments to ‘equalize’ the playing field by allowing them to also grow GM crops.

Given Kenya’s position as the dominant economy in eastern Africa, it is very likely that its embrace of GM technology will have a similar effect on its neighbors.

African Agriculture

Kenya: Striga weed parasite to be tackled with pesticide-treated maize seed

Striga is a weed parasite that subsists on maize and other grain plants, causing huge farmer losses. None of the various coping mechanisms in use have proven to be foolproof.

The Integrated Striga Management in Africa project has embarked on a strategy to coat maize seeds with a mixture of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. The herbicide-coated maize seed kills Striga before it damages the maize crop.

The project donated a $37,000 seed-coating machine to the Kenya Seed Company in order to allow trials amongst farmers in the country’s Nyanza and Western provinces, according to a report by news agency Xinhua.

Cooperating partners in the seven year project to devise the technology are the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMTY), BASF Chemical Company and African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF).

An AATF official said, “The weed causes between 10 percent and 20 percent grain yields loss in many fields in western Kenya, affecting over 250,000 hectares. It is worst in the Lake Victoria basin, and farmers lose 300,000 tonnes of maize every year in the region.”

He said small scale farmers whose maize yields are typically about half a tonne per hectare should be able to raise them to two tonnes a hectare with the treated seeds.

The Kenya Seed Company is to produce and distribute 40 tonnes of Ua Kayongo H1 coated maize variety for farmers in Nyanza and Western provinces this planting season.

.African Agriculture

Kenya horticulture exports rise 18% in 2011

Kenya's earnings from horticulture exports rose 18% in 2011, despite a marginal dip in volumes, buoyed by a favorable exchange rate and strong prices for vegetables and fruits.

Horticulture is the country's leading source of foreign exchange, alongside tourism, remittances from Kenyans living abroad and tea exports.

East Africa's largest economy earned 91.6 billion shillings ($1.10 billion) from the sale of flower, fruit, vegetable and nut exports in 2011, data from the USAID Kenya Horticulture Competitiveness Project (KHCP) showed.

The body, which aims to boost employment in the industry, said there was scope for further growth in 2012, especially in flower production, which makes up the bulk of the sector's earnings.

Kenya exports most its horticultural produce to Europe, whose sovereign debt crisis has driven many countries to the brink of recession at the start of 2012.

The USAID Kenya Horticulture Competitiveness Project said the country exported 382,638 tonnes of horticulture in 2011 compared with 403,026 tonnes in 2010.

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