How goat farming lifted us out of poverty

 How a goat farming project helped lift women groups in Kitui Central out of poverty. BY FELISTA WANGARI

When the 2019 national census was conducted, nearly half of the residents of Kitui were found to be living in poverty. A just over a decade prior, the women of Kwa Ukungu and Kwa Nginda say that was them.

At Kalumu Malombe’s homestead in Kwa Ukungu, Kambua John recalls being so poor that drinking milk tea was a fantasy.

“We had nothing. We were chosen from the poor of the poor … goat farming has transformed our lives,” says Ms John.

Their fortunes began to change in 2005, when the local assistant chief asked them to form two groups of 25 women, who would then be trained on dairy goat farming and be given a starter stock of three galla she-goats each. Each group was also given an exotic Toggenburg buck for cross-breeding with the local drought-resilient she-goats that could produce hybrid offspring to provide milk, meat and a livelihood.

The two groups were part of the larger Kitui Mwingi Breeders Association, which was supported by Farm Afrika, an organisation that seeks to boost the harvests and incomes of smallholder farmers, to lift them out of poverty.

The goats had to be cross-bred and bear kids twice before the required hybrid was achieved. The first two rounds of offspring were sold at Sh8,000 per goat, but once the required mix was achieved, the goats fetched higher prices with the third crossbred offspring fetching Sh13,000 a goat. The local goats in contrast, would sell for Sh3,000 on average, depending on the season. The pure Toggenburg breeds were sold at Sh28,000 per goat, but they couldn’t withstand the climatic conditions of Kitui Central, and died off. The hybrids were better adapted to the climate.

Margaret remembers selling three goats at Sh15,000 each and getting Sh45,000 as a result.

“I had never handled that kind of money. I couldn’t believe it was my money. I used it to clear a school fees balance of Sh15,000, bought chairs for my house and two large sufurias, so that I wouldn’t have to borrow whenever I had guests,” she says, adding that goat farming has helped them climb out of poverty.

Making changes

With their improved income, the women made changes to their chama (informal savings group), and turned it into a table banking group instead. With table banking, they now have access to credit to buy farm inputs like fertiliser and feed like napier grass, if the rains fail and there is insufficient feed on their farms.

“Before, we didn’t have access to money, so we would contribute Sh50 and give the money to one person in rotation. We didn’t achieve much with that. Now a member can get a Sh20,000 loan for school fees,” says Ms Mwende.

Rebecca Kasikali, the chairlady of the Kwa Nginda group, adds that improved income reduced their financial dependency.

“We used to wait for our husbands to bring money home. If they got nothing, we would sleep hungry,” says Ms Kasikali, adding that goat farming taught them how to make a living through selling milk and meat.

The group’s buck also earned them money, as those who brought their goats would pay Sh50 for crossbreeding services. Currently, those with bucks charge Sh200 for the services.

The proceeds from goat farming have also seen some of the women start other small businesses in addition to farming. Ms Mwende and Ms John, run a grocery shop and a cafe at the local shopping centre, respectively.

“We used to struggle to find income as casual labourers on other people’s farms; but now we are business women and we can afford to employ people to help on our farms. The goats uplifted us,” says Ms Mwende.

Goat farming in Kitui in numbers

-        87% of rural household income in Kitui is generated from agriculture, which is the main economic activity

-        82% of households involved in farming keep livestock

-        69% of farmers rear goats, keeping an average of 5 goats per household

This feature is supported by a grant from WAN-IFRA’s Women in News Social Impact Reporting Initiative on Climate Change

Climate smart farming saves farmers in Makueni from loss, but water remains a challenge

Women adapt to changing climate using climate-smart techniques, but water remains a thorn in the flesh. BY FELISTA WANGARI

 

Before Mary Mathule got together with her neighbours to form the Kikumini Muvao Farmers Self-Help Group in Makueni, in 2012, life was difficult.

“Getting money for food was a struggle and we often ate one unbalanced meal a day. It was either ugali or plain maize with black tea, in the evenings,” she recalls.

When she first moved to Muvao location as a newly-wed in 2003, she remembers it raining sufficiently twice a year. Over the years, however, the rainfall patterns changed and crop failure became the norm. Ms Mathule and her neighbours had to put more effort to reap a harvest.

While the climate hasn’t improved, their farming techniques have, since they formed the 17-member group and started practising climate-smart agriculture. Their livelihoods have also improved.

“We used to lose most of our crop as residue on the farm because of insufficient rain. Harvesting was a dream. We decided to do proper farming. Now, I have enough food and I am in agribusiness,” says Ms Mathule, who currently has cowpeas, beans and maize crop from improved drought-resistant seed on her farm. She also raises day-old chicks for sale and keeps dairy cattle for milk.

 

In addition to their individual farming, the Muvao farmer’s group also farm as a group on a one-and-a-quarter acre they bought together. They occasionally lease three acres too, whenever there is sufficient rain. They also rear chicken and run a general shop.

“This past season we didn’t lease farmland because we heard on the radio that there wouldn’t be sufficient rain, so we decided not to waste our money,” says Hellen, one of the members of the group.

 Ms Mathule started rearing poultry in 2015 with 10 improved chicken and 20 local (kienyeji) chicken.

 “I started noticing the change in 2018 and by 2019, I became known as a serious chicken farmer,” says Ms Mathule, who adds that since they started practising climate smart agriculture, the survival of their crops has improved, especially in the reality of insufficient rains.

 

“In the group we learn about selecting drought-resilient seeds, fighting pests,  using fertiliser and manure and early planting and staying up to date with information on the weather as ways to adapt to the changed climate conditions,” says Hellen.

“When the climate changes, you also change as a farmer. That’s what smart agriculture is about,” says Ms Mathule.

 With their village savings and loans association (VSLA), they have access to credit to fund their individual and group farming, as well as other needs like school fees. Last year, Ms Mathule used a loan and her dividends from the VSLA to add chicks to her poultry project.  Selling their poultry as a group also helps them fetch better prices than they would as individuals.

“The main challenge for farmers is that when you put money in the farm, you are not assured that you will get a return. Perhaps what you harvest will be just enough to cover costs. That’s why we must practise climate smart farming,” says Ms Mathule.

 

Some of the techniques the farmers are using are planting resilient seeds suitable for drylands, mulching, planting cover crops and ripping with tractors instead of ploughing, as part of conservation agriculture. They also practice crop rotation.

“When people complain of no harvest, you will not lack something to eat if you practise this type of agriculture. For pest control, monitor the crops early and spray that section if you find pests, to save the crop from infestation,” says Ms Mathule.

Even as they adapt to the changed weather patterns, Ms Mathule says that water remains a major challenge and suggests that digging farm ponds would be helpful as people can use that water for kitchen gardens to promote food sufficiency.

 

“We went to Tharaka Nithi and found it was even drier, but people had farm ponds which provided water for farming. When I came back home, I dug one, but within two weeks after the rain, the water had dried up, so I was advised to get a dam liner, but the cost of getting the dam done properly at Sh80,000 is rather high.”

For now, when the rains fail, the farmers rely on the community borehole about 10 kilometres away, or the community pond that is nearer home. They also buy water from neighbours with ponds.

In the neighbouring Sinai village, where Elizabeth Mutisya leads a 42-member group of farmers, the members bought two hens and a cock for each person, through table banking, to produce eggs for their consumption.

Ms Mutisya has learnt to plant drought-resilient cereals like cow peas and green grams, which  withstand the changing weather better. Like the other women farmers, she says that water is still a challenge for most farmers.

“What people need are dams so that if it rains they can collect water for vegetables because it has become harder to rely on rain-fed agriculture,” says Ms Mutisya, who had a farm pond dug just before the previous rain season in October.

 

This feature is supported by a grant from WAN-IFRA’s Women in News Social Impact Reporting Initiative on Climate Change

 

 

 

How seeds are saving women in Gilgil from hunger

In the face of poor harvests from frequent drought, women in Gilgil turn to indigenous knowledge on seed saving for food security, and it comes with reduction of intimate partner violence, reports FELISTA WANGARI

 

 For nearly a decade, Beatrice Wangui often stared at the rocky ground surrounding her new home in Langalanga, and reminisced upon the good old days in Molo, where farmland was in plenty, soil was fertile and bumper harvests of maize, beans and potatoes were routine.

Ms Wangui and her family were forced out of their home in Molo in December 2007, following the violence that erupted in light of the contested presidential election result. They initially sought refuge in Gilgil, before settling in Langalanga in 2012. There, the smallholder farmer family figured that farming would not be part of their new life.

“We bought the land we could find (and afford) at the time. We didn't have the luxury of being choosy, but the land was so rocky, I didn’t think anything could grow out of it,” says Ms Wangui, who is now a vegetable farmer in Langalanga, Nakuru County.

Back then Ms Wangui got by as a casual labourer on other people’s farms, until she learnt about dryland farming techniques from a local community group, which was being trained by Seed Savers Network, a Nakuru-based organisation that trains small-holder farmers to improve the productivity of their farms for food security.

“I learnt that crops could grow anywhere, even on rocky ground, and learnt that I didn’t have to worry about seeds,” she says

Beatrice Wangui, a vegetable farmer in Langa Langa in Nakuru County, never thought that the rocky ground in her home could produce food for her household, let alone surplus for sale. Photo | Seed Savers Network

With rains comes conflict

According to the Nakuru Climate Risk Profile, nine in 10 smallholder farmers growing crops like beans, garden peas and Irish potatoes use local or recycled seed. Moreover, like in other parts of the country, farmers in Nakuru rely on rain-fed agriculture, which is a challenge as rains are erratic and unpredictable.

 These two factors would come into play for women, on whose shoulders the burden of providing food is placed. During the rainy season, conflict, and in turn gender-based violence, would increase in homes.

“The onset of the rainy season comes with conflict (and violence) when women ask their husbands for money to buy seeds. You can’t plant when others are planting if your husband doesn’t have money or hasn’t given you money,” says Ms Wangui.

 According to Julia Kamau, the gender and agroecology officer at Seed Savers Network, for many of the women, land, which is owned by their husbands, is their only source of livelihood.

 “It can take even a month just to get Sh1,000 which may not be enough for a packet of seeds and other needs,” says Ms Kamau.

John Wainaina at his home in Gilgil, where he hosts the community seed bank for members of the 20 -member Kikopey Seed Banking Self-help Group, 16 0f whom are women. Photo | Felista Wangari 

 

Mitigation strategy

To get around the lack of seeds and money to buy them, women would seek work on other people’s farms to raise money for seeds, but that would affect their ability to use early planting as a climate adaptation strategy.

 “The rainy season is projected to start in the third and fourth week of March, but that was preceded by drought. This means people don’t have money because they didn’t harvest in the previous season. If it rains now and you don’t have seeds, you have to first work for those with money, so that you can get money to buy seeds. By the time you get to working on your own farm, the rain has subsided. When you have seeds, that is no longer a challenge,” says John Wainaina, who leads the Kikopey Seed Saving Self-Help Group in Gilgil.

Seed saving has been a game changer.

 

“We have seen transformation with the women when they are able to save seeds. They say that there are no more fights and quarrels because they are not asking anyone for money, and they have food. From this position, they have a voice at the table, respect and some independence. Giving a woman her own means of getting food doesn’t rely on another person is transformative,” says Ms Kamau, the gender officer at Seed Savers Network.

Ms Wangui, who shakes her head in disbelief when she recalls her journey from 2007 to this point, no longer has to worry about where the seeds or money to buy them will come from once the rains begin. She can also plant the seed varieties of her choice.

“When you start saving seeds and adopt better farming techniques, you don’t have to ask for money to buy seeds, salt or to go out and about because every day someone is buying your produce. You stop being a borrower because you now have your own seeds,” says Ms Wangui.

Eunice Wainaina, a teacher who practises farming with her husband Mr Wainaina of Kikopey Seed Savers Self-help Group, has 90 kilogrammes of bean seeds of various varieties in the seed bank -- enough to plant on nearly five acres. She says that having seeds in the seed bank means that she can plant early, which is one of the recommended climate adaptation strategies to minimise instances of failed crops. In addition to seed saving and early planting, her family uses permaculture to conserve moisture in the soil and help the crops grow long after the rains have subsided.

When we died of thirst

Growing up on the slopes of Mount Kenya, where streams of pure water flow against smooth pebbles and sand, water was never an issue.

There was so much water to take for granted, especially as we splashed around in it, and disturbed the quiet life of water beetles in the process.

Of course at a certain age, girls began to hunt for water beetles. Myth had it that if you put a water beetle to your chest and it happened to bite in the right place, that place would blossom to the envy of flat-chested pre-teen girls.

I have never been one to subject myself to unnecessary pain and I opted to let the beetles be and let nature take it's course. It eventually did.

Back to the water.

With so much water around us, to do with as we pleased, it pained me to watch documentaries of young girls in arid lands, girls my age, living in the same country as I - and yet having to struggle so much for water while I played. Girls with sunken eyes and parched lips.

It touched my heart then, but little did I know that I would soon be facing water problems, though not at the scale that the parched sections of the country faced.

As I grew, so did global warming. Words like climate change became frequent in the conversations I heard. Moreover, having moved from the slopes, the reality of dry taps struck me in the face.

The water sector had by now been privatised to make the service more efficient, but as the sector changed from public to private hands, things did not just remain the same, they got worse. (What did we expect when we don't expand infrastructure to cater for the growing population?)

I had never known a scenario where you had to wait for days to get clean water flowing from the tap. But at least the water company 'gave' us water three days a week and slapped us with a regular bill every end of the month.

Recently, I had stories of frogs flowing from taps - but that is something I would not want to get into.

There are places I lived, where we had to wait up for water to the wee hours and when it came, it was a trickle that was to be shared by all the neighbours queued with their containers - from the smallest cup to the largest tank. Woe unto you if the water ran out before your turn to fetch came along.

Nowadays, water issues are a normal part of life, so when we mark World Water Day and think of sustainable ways to fix our water problems, I know where the shoe pinches.

However, I cannot claim to have walked tens of kilometres to get the precious life-sustaining liquid. On the rare occasion that the water company withholds water for more than a week, there are numerous water vendors that save us from the long walk and deliver it to our doorsteps.

We can't live without it, we need to preserve and protect our catchment areas - our water towers.  We need to use and re-use it sustainably. We need to sober up and deal with this. If we do not, we will surely die of thirst.

AOB.

1. I appeal to the water company to provide water to the Public Service Vehicle crews at least twice a week. A trip to anywhere next to a smelly, unwashed person can be rather unnerving. Sweating on a hot day doesn't mean that your body has self-cleaned - go take a bath!

2. The irony of our drinking water supplier in denying us water without notice, on World Water Day, so that we can stand in solidarity with those who lack water. We should be given adequate notice next time.

3. Is it only in Kenya where the landlord rations water? He gags it during the day, complains that you have too many guests who use gallons of water to flush the loo, and generally polices your water use like a maniac. You have to apply to use water for every little thing. Surely, we are more responsible than that now - especially after realizing how endangered the liquid is.

4. Who follows that advice about taking eight glasses a day consistently? It is good for you, but we all know that we seldom do what the doctor ordered, unless it becomes a matter of life or death.

Government announces new measures to protect citizens from extreme heat

The government has announced new measures to help citizens cope with record high temperatures currently being experienced in the country. The announcement follows huge public demand for the government to act and protect its citizens from the unforgiving sun.

A statement sent from the office of public communications to media houses read in part:

“Due to the unprecedented heat we have decided, after long and drawn out consultations, to let our citizens walk ‘free’ to minimize the effects of the scorching sun.”

Chief government parrot said during an emergency press briefing that the government had heard the cry of the common man and was committed to liberating citizens from the shackles of too much heat.

“As a government we have noticed that this is a new phenomenon, never experienced before in this country and we have decided to do something about it.”

On being asked to clarify what exactly this directive to walk ‘free’ meant, the Chief Government know-it-all had this to say:

“The government has heard your cry. You said: Tunaomba serikali iangalie hii maneno. Hii jua itatumaliza (We beg the government to intervene in this situation. The sun will destroy us.) and we heard you. You can choose to interpret it the way you wish, but we are just saying that people have now been freed from the uncomfortable heat,” he said.

Government meteorologists present during the media briefing said even they did not know how hot it really was. But before they could give details, the government parrot blurted out an explanation.

“Our thermometers are not calibrated to register temperatures that exceed the ones that we are used to here. In fact we will fast-track the process of procuring super-thermometers from China which can show temperatures that are even out-of-this world,” he said.

Religious leaders, who later held a press conference to condemn the new government directive, said they would hold countrywide demonstrations to oppose it.

“We cannot allow the government to let people walk nude. This directive is unafrican and unconstitutional and we urge all citizens of good repute to disregard it,” the leaders said.

But citizens from all walks of life welcomed the move saying that for the first time ever, the government had responded to the ‘tunaomba serikali’ cry. The police spokesman, on the other hand, told reporters that anyone found walking with few or no clothes under the guise of ease from the sun’s heat would be arrested.

“Even the people on the Masinde Muliro Gardens bench are fully clothed as they go about their business. We cannot interfere with people’s rights in Muliro Gardens. But other citizens cannot use the sun as the excuse to bare it all. We will charge them with indecent exposure, government directive or not,” she declared.

However, the government defended the directive saying that it was absolutely necessary. It blamed the current idiotic utterances by the political class and the ordinary mwananchi alike on the beyond-hellish temperatures; saying the pronouncement would keep everyone within normal sanity levels.