Posts Tagged ‘Kenya’

Sep06

Innovation of the Week: Tunnel Farming to Boost Food Security

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By Carly Chaapel

In places where severe weather and pests threaten crop yields, farmers are turning to tunnel-shaped greenhouses that improve the quality of their vegetables, decrease the need for pesticides, and promise higher yields by protecting the plants from severe wind, frost, and hail.

Tunnel farming can increase food security in regions with harsh environmental conditions (Photo Credit: Hartwood Farm)

CEDE Greenhouses manufactures greenhouses and tunnels to be implemented throughout southern Africa. Over the past 30 years, they have helped over 350 farmers start their own greenhouse businesses. Recently, CEDE partnered with Klein Karoo Seed Marketing Company to create the Africa Tunnel. Its simple design consists of plastic cloth and supporting beams, and makes it possible for new farmers to enter the business.

Greenhouses can be valuable tools for protecting plants from harsh environmental conditions while also extending the growing season. Where sunlight is lacking, the structure can optimize what light it receives by trapping the long-wave-length heat radiation that is reemitted by objects within the greenhouse walls. In arid or semi-arid regions such as Kenya, greenhouses can lower temperatures by blocking some light with shade cloths and encouraging swift ventilation. Greenhouses may also limit the amount of water that plants lose through transpiration, which can significantly improve yields where water is in short supply. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 0.2 percent of the total agricultural land is irrigated.

In addition to manufacturing the materials necessary for tunnel farming, CEDE also offers training sessions for sustainable crop production. The company teaches farmers how to sow seeds, manage plant growth, and finally market their own fruits and vegetables.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Africa, Agriculture, Development, Diet, Food Security, Health, Innovation of the Week, Nutrition, Poverty, School, Sustainable

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Sep05

Nourishing the Planet TV: Aqua Shops

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In this week’s episode, Nourishing the Planet discusses FARM-Africa’s aquacultural initiative in western Kenya, which has established an Aqua Shop franchise that provides farmers with technical advice about aquaculture practices and give them the necessary materials to set up and maintain healthy fish ponds.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOR8RJC9BSk&feature=plcp

To purchase your own copy of State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet, please click HERE.

Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Africa, Agriculture, Development, Diet, Education, Environment, Farmers, Fish, Food, Income, Nourishing the Planet TV, Sustainable, Water

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Aug01

Innovation of the Week: Aqua Shops

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By Eleanor Fausold

Aquaculture has potential to stimulate economic growth and increase food production in Kenya. (Photo credit: Lilian Kamola Kaivilu)

In Western Kenya, where nearly 60 percent of households depend on fish as a source of income, dwindling fish supplies are hurting the economy and those who rely on fish as a source of food. Lake Victoria currently provides over 90 percent of Kenya’s fish supply, but a combination of overfishing and pollution have led to a decline in fish stocks, causing prices to rise because supply is not keeping up with demand.

As a solution, Kenya’s government is supporting the development of aquaculture in an effort to promote economic growth and stimulate food production. In addition to providing basic infrastructure and supporting research and development, the government is also providing funding for the construction of 46,000 fish ponds in 160 of the country’s 210 constituencies and has given farmers catfish and tilapia fingerlings, or very young fish, and fish feed to help get them started. Despite these governmental efforts, however, many farmers still lack access to the support and inputs required for long-term success.

In an effort to supplement and further the Kenyan government’s initiatives, FARM-Africa, in partnership with Natural Resources International, the University of Stirling, Imani Development, the U.K. Department for International Development Research Into Use Programme, and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, has established a series of six Aqua Shops in western Kenya. These shops provide farmers with technical advice about aquaculture practices and give them the materials, including fish feed and manure (for fertilization), needed to set up and maintain healthy fish ponds and lakes.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Africa, Agriculture, Diet, Innovation of the Week

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Jul03

What Works: Using Technology to Give Farmers Better Information

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By Jeffrey Lamoureux

For a farmer good information is time sensitive. Good information must move quickly and freely to reach those who rely on it when they make decisions. Digital technologies have revolutionized the way information travels worldwide, and the increasing availability of the mobile phone in particular is allowing better information to reach greater numbers of people than ever before. Several innovative programs are demonstrating the immense impact that simplest asset—timely and accurate information—can have on farmer’s livelihoods.

Better information allows farmers to make better decisions (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

The Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) was founded in 2008 to be a clearinghouse for the country’s agricultural commodities. Comprised of a central trading floor in the capital, Addis Ababa, and regional warehouses across the country, the ECX is able to provide farmers with up-to-the-minute price information. Trades are conducted and recorded digitally, allowing instantaneous communication of prices. When a farmer delivers a harvest to the ECX’s warehouses they know they are getting the right price for it. Additionally, the ECX’s modern facilities help minimize post-harvest losses from rotting. The ECX and its founder, Eleni Gabre-Madhin, were featured in a PBS documentary following the initial days of the exchange’s life.

While the ECX is streamlining the market, in Kenya techies have been developing mobile applications to help farmers manage their land and animals. They are building on the success and popularity of the mobile banking application M-PESA, a service that allows anyone with a cell phone to transfer money domestically. The best known of these is iCow, an application that helps farmers manage their herds. The application allows farmers to register their cows, allowing them to receive individualized messages reminding them of their cow’s gestation and feeding schedules. It sends updated market prices and best practices advice, and keeps a database of experts for consultation.

In Turkey, the Agricultural Directorate is utilizing the ubiquity of cell phones to distribute critical pest and weather information to farmers. Utilizing data gleaned from meteorological stations around the country, the Directorate sends text message alerts to farmers before peak pest season and before an oncoming frost. This has allowed farmer’s to reduce the number of pesticides applied each year, and to take preventative measures to protect their crops from frost.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Agriculture, Development, Economy, Farmers, Innovation, Sustainable, Technology

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Jun07

Let Us Honor the Earth’s First Stewards

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This week an op-ed, “Let us honour the Earth’s first stewards,” co-authored by Danielle Nierenberg, director of Nourishing the Planet, and Rebecca Adamson, President of First Peoples Worldwide was featured in Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.

A meeting of Samburu pastoralists in Kenya. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

The article addresses the inequity in how Indigenous Peoples have been excluded from the decision making process regarding their traditional land, water, and mineral resources. Land traditionally owned by indigenous people, often officially belongs to others—former Kenyan President Moi for example—who sell the land, resulting in resource depletion and marginalization of the communities.

The article highlights work that First Peoples Worldwide and other organizations are doing to help indigenous people to maintain economic and cultural self-determination.

Click here to read the full article.

To purchase State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet please click HERE. And to watch the one minute book trailer, click HERE.

Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Africa, Biodiversity, Conservation, Culture, Environment, Funding, Indigenous Peoples, Investment, Kenya, Land, Press, Sustainable, Tradition

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May29

The Last Hunger Season

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Today, our friend Roger Thurow, senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, releases his new book, The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change.

The Last Hunger Season, by Roger Thurow, is now on sale. (Image credit: Amazon.com)

The book is an intimate portrait of the lives of four smallholder farmers in western Kenya who are working with One Acre Fund to move from subsistence farming to sustainable farming, from farming to live to farming to make a living.

To order the book, click here or visit www.thelasthungerseason.com.

Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Africa, Agriculture, Culture, Development, Diet, Farmers, Hunger, Kenya, Reporting, Research, Sustainable

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May12

A Dam Brings Food Insecurity to Indigenous People

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By Patricia Baquero

Along its 760-kilometer course, from the Shewan highlands in southern Ethiopia, down to Lake Turkana in Kenya, the Omo River supports half a million Indigenous People from more than two dozen different tribes, including the Bodi, Karo, Muguji, Mursi, Elmolo, Gabbra, Rendille and Hamar in the Lower Omo valley and around Lake Turkana. For generations, the Indigenous People have farmed sorghum, maize and beans along the lower Omo and around Lake Turkana region, depending on the annual flooding cycle of the river. The natural ebb and flow of the Omo River provides water for agriculture, livestock, and fishing.

The Gibe III Dam, currently under construction, could exacerbate water scarcity and conflicts in the region. (Photo credit: Mark Angelo)

But since the 1970s, droughts have increased in frequency and length, bringing famine and displacing thousands of people. Water scarcity and conflicts over water resources are also likely to worsen when the Gibe III Dam project finishes in 2012. The dam is situated about 300 kilometers southwest of Addis Ababa with a capacity of 1,870 MW, and can provide power to 400 million people. Ethiopia is among the countries with the lowest rates of electricity—currently, only 15 percent of Ethiopians have access to electricity, and this access is mainly in cities.

But the dam potentially threatens the lives of the Indigenous farmers and fishers from the Omo-Turkana region. According to the African Resources Working Group (ARWG), the Gibe III dam will reduce the lake’s depth by about seven to ten meters in its first five years, adding to the effects of climate change, which has likely reduced the depth by about five to eight meters already. The dam will disturb the natural flooding cycle of the Omo River, eliminating the seasonal floods and the nutrients deposited along the river.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Africa, Agriculture, Climate Change, Conflict, Conservation, Development, Drought, Ethiopia, Farmers, Fish, Food, Food Security, Food Sovereignty, Hunger, Indigenous, Irrigation, Water

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Apr19

Goldman Environmental Prize Announces this Year’s Winners

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This is the first in a series of blogs on the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners.

By Alison Blackmore

The Goldman Environmental Prize is awarded annually to six environmental heroes whose local and community-based efforts to protect natural resources have created significant change, often at great personal risk. Each recipient receives an award of US$150,000 to continue their inspiring work.

The 2012 recipients of the Goldman Environmental Prize. (Photo Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize)

The Goldman Environmental Foundation recently announced the 2012 winners, and today we highlight three of this year’s six recipients of the prestigious prize: Ikal Angelie of Kenya, Ma Jun of China, and Evengina Chirikova of Russia.

Since 2008, Ikal Angelei has been fighting the Ethiopian government’s construction of the Gibe 3 Dam along the Omo River. The project threatens to rapidly deplete the already dwindling water levels of East Africa’s Rift Valley’s Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake and home to a thriving ecosystem which provides a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of farmers, herdsmen, and fishermen. In 2011, her organization, Friends of Lake Turkana, a group comprised of indigenous communities dependent on the lake’s resources, successfully urged members of the Kenyan parliament to demand an independent environmental assessment of the dam from Ethiopia before they continue with construction. Friends of Lake Turkana also convinced major investors in the project, including the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, to withdraw their consideration for financing the dam, leaving the Ethiopian government struggling to find funding to continue the project.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Conservation, Environment, Ethiopia, Kenya

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Feb09

Innovation of the Week: Rewarding Farmers for Providing Ecosystem Services

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By Jesse Chang

The Sasumua dam supplies Nairobi, Kenya with 20 percent of its fresh water, but land use changes have started to contaminate this important source of water. Forests and wetlands are being converted into agricultural land and commercial plots. This reduces water flow during the dry season and increases surface runoff during the wet season. It also increases soil erosion and the run-off of chemical and biological pollutants from agricultural fields. This negatively impacts the livelihoods of both city dwellers and smallholders living in the watershed.

Farmers in Kenya are being compensated for their environmental services under the PRESA research project. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

Pro-poor Rewards for Environmental Services in Africa (PRESA), is a research project created by the World Agroforestry Centre to improve livelihoods by enhancing ecosystem services. PRESA works on eight sites in the highlands of East and West Africa and collaborates with national partners, research institutions, universities, and NGOs to generate and share information that supports payments for ecosystems. By rewarding environmental stewards, instead of punishing wrongdoers, PRESA uses market-based approaches to induce behavioral change among ecosystem stewards to reduce poverty and conserve the environment.

The market-based system works by rewarding the individual or community that provides a certain environmental service. Building a grass waterway 20 kilometers long and 3 meters wide in the Sasumua watershed, for example, can reduce soil sedimentation by 20 percent. This amounts to savings of US$23,000 a year in purification costs for the Nairobi Water Company, which operates downstream and provides the city with clean water. The cost of maintaining the waterway is only US$3,000 a year for the 500 households involved, making it a win-win scenario for both farmers and urban residents.

Rewards can come in many different forms. The community-based rewards can be a powerful incentive for protecting the environment—schools, roads, and wells can be built in return for using sustainable farming techniques. The farmers in Sasumua prefer assistance to implementing land conservation measures over cash payments, and want the Nairobi Water Company to help them establish rain water harvesting techniques.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Africa, Agriculture, Environment, Farmers, Innovation, Innovation of the Week, Kenya, Water

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Feb02

Innovation of the Week: Cell Phone App—Applications of Local Knowledge

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By Mara Schechter

For smallholder farmers, every little bit counts when it comes to how much money they get for their crops. Amos Gichamba, 26, grew up on a dairy farm in central Kenya, where he saw middlemen take advantage of farmers who lacked information about how much they could charge for milk. Rural African farmers often don’t know how much prices should be, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation and loss of income.

Many African cell phone app developers have created cell phone apps for social change. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

In April 2010, Gichamba created a cell phone application, or app, called M-Kulima, which farmers can use to text questions about local dairy markets to a computer database and receive replies. Africa has the highest growth rate in cell phone usage, making this an effective way to connect people to information. According to the International Telecommunication Union, almost 30 percent of Africans have a cell phone subscription, compared to only 5 percent of Africans who use the Internet.

Many African cell phone app developers have created cell phone apps for social change. These apps help people transfer money, get aid after disasters, map their land and farms, and learn market conditions and prices. According to Gichamba, “As Africans, we are the ones who understand Africa the best… We are involved with what’s happening. So, when we are coming up with solutions, we come up with solutions for problems we know.”

Gichamba first learned about how to spread local knowledge through mobile technology at a Mobile Boot Camp, started by Jessica Colaco, a researcher at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya. She began the boot camp not only to help people who want to become app developers, but also to encourage students to work on local solutions to local problems. She explained to CNN, “People in the environment know exactly what they need.”

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Agriculture, Farmers, Kenya, Technology

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