|
Insecurity Leaves Crops Rotting
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
1 February 2008
Nairobi
Teresia Chebet and hundreds of other small-scale farmers in the
western Kenyan district of Nandi North have not been directly
affected by the violence that has ravaged the country in the past
month, yet their livelihoods are threatened because markets have
become inaccessible.
"My tomatoes are rotting in the fields, what we harvest we use to
cook, the rest we feed to the chickens and calves because roads
going to many markets have been blocked," Chebet, 46, told IRIN on
31 January. "I can't even share the tomatoes with my neighbours
because theirs are also rotting."
Chebet's neighbour, Ezekiel Seurei, 52, has five acres of
pineapples. "Although the pineapples are not in season, I am now
hawking the little that I harvest because I cannot get to the
markets in Uasin Gishu [a neighbouring district]," Seurei said.
"For now, I am taking my pineapples to [the privately owned]
Baraton University as well as selling them in schools and other
institutions."
Roads in the district, like others in the Rift Valley, Nyanza and
Western Kenya regions, considered the stronghold of the opposition
Orange Democratic Party (ODM), have not escaped the wrath of
marauding youths who have taken to violence in protest over the
outcome of the 27 December 2007 presidential election.
President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner but opposition
leader Raila Odinga has disputed the result, saying the poll was
rigged in Kibaki's favour. Since then, violence has rocked parts
of the country, with the latest fighting taking ethnic dimensions.
The lack of access to markets has affected not only Nandi North
but the whole Rift Valley Province, the country's bread-basket,
has been hit.
In their latest update on Kenya's post-election emergency, UN
agencies and NGOs identify livelihood support for internally
displaced persons (IDPs) and others affected by the violence as a
priority. This would be done by distributing agricultural inputs
and basic construction kits for re-establishing small business
enterprises, according to the 4-29 January inter-cluster progress
report prepared by the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-Kenya).
Planned intervention
According to the report, humanitarian actors and the government
are working on an inter-agency strategic framework for early
recovery and food security.
As emergency response and recovery efforts continue on the
national level, small-scale as well as large-scale dairy and maize
farmers count their losses.
Jeremiah Ruto, a maize and dairy farmer who owns a milk plant in
Kabiyet, Nandi North District, said poor rains, coupled with the
violence, had severely affected his operations.
"Before the violence, I sold about 2,000l of milk daily in Kisumu
[capital of the neighbouring Nyanza Province] but now this has
dropped to only 500l, and then only if my vehicle can get to
Kisumu," he said. "We used to make daily trips to Kisumu but we
are now doing the trip once or twice a week depending on whether
the roads are clear and if we have sufficient quantities." Ruto
has also had to lay off several workers.
The picture is even worse for maize farming. "There is no maize to
speak of this time," Ruto said. "The quantity we harvested was
very low due to the poor rains last year; some farmers have not
even harvested despite the December-January harvest season drawing
to an end. I usually harvested about 1,000 bags from 40 acres
under maize but this time I got only 400 bags; this does not even
cover the inputs I used."
Costly fertiliser
More worrying is the fact that most maize farmers have not started
preparing for the next planting season, mainly because of the
prevailing unrest but also due to the prohibitive cost of inputs.
"Last year, a bag of fertiliser went for Ksh2,000 [US$30], now it
is being sold for KSh3,500 [$54]; a lot of my friends and I are
hesitant to prepare the land because the input might exceed the
output," Ruto said.
Due to the unrest, the National Cereals and Produce Board of
Kenya, in charge of the country's grain reserves, has not yet
opened maize-buying centres across the Rift Valley region this
year.
According to a January update by the Kenya Food Security Network,
which comprises the UN World Food Programme (WFP), USAID, Famine
Early Warning System and the government, the unrest has led to an
unprecedented decline in food security among normally food-secure
farmers as well as the urban poor.
Overall, the group said, national food security had dramatically
declined in just two weeks following the violence that has
resulted in hundreds of deaths, displacement of at least 290,000
people and destruction of livelihoods for hundreds of thousands
more.
The Kenya Food Security Network is due to conduct a multi-agency
food security assessment in the first week of February to
determine the extent of food insecurity in the affected areas.
In its humanitarian update covering 21-28 January, the UN Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-Kenya), stated:
"The next two months are usually a critical period for land
preparation and planting, however, with the prospects for return
and resettlement being rather dim, many, if not most, of the
farmers will not be able to carry out these tasks. Rising prices
are also affecting farm inputs and availability of basic
commodities in the markets throughout the country."
Farmers who depend on short rains and those in drought-prone areas
are likely to experience significant crop failure, OCHA-Kenya
stated.
Going it alone
Nick Moon, the managing director of KickStart - which produces
water pumps and oil presses - told IRIN on 31 January that the
demand for the company's portable water pumps had risen in the
past month. He attributes the high demand to farmers' need for
greater self-reliance in the face of poor access to markets to buy
food.
The small pumps cost Ksh2,490 [$35] and weigh about 4kg. He said
farmers could bounce back to productivity, with time and the
technology, such as the portable irrigation pumps, which are
affordable for many farming communities.
|
