With the unpredictable weather conditions that are being experienced now, farmers have been advised to plant drought-resistant crops.
That will make sure that at least they can have resilience even at the current extreme weather situation.
Kilifi County Chief Officer in charge of Agriculture Victor Nzai, said farmers now need to embrace climate-smart agriculture in order to survive during these hard times.
‘’Because of the current weather situation, we are encouraging farmers to plant drought-resistant crops such as cassava, cashew nuts, and coconuts since they don’t require many rains to thrive,” he said.
He said making farmers more resilient to changing weather conditions is a critical part of fighting hunger.
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“With rainfall becoming less and less consistent, Kilifi county Government has encouraged farmers to plant drought-resistant crops, including cassava, cashew nuts, and coconut which are the most dominant crops in the Coast region,” he said.
Maize, the primary staple crop is grown by many smallholder farmers, requires adequate rainfall in order to thrive. Facing insufficient rainfall, especially at a time like this in Kilifi has exposed many farmers to prolonged hunger risks and meal–skipping as they depended on maize.
Lately, maize has taken over traditional crops like sorghum and millets in the County. With the failure of the long rains in the March-June and July –August rainy seasons in 2021, farmers who planted maize have been most affected.
Though few farmers have been embracing cassava farming, they have been grappling with many challenges, having the present day the consumer market has not yet appreciated the cassava value, people still view it as the last option that has made a lot of competition with other crops like maize.
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The residents value the maize crop and have depended fully on it as they prefer ugali, making other crops like millet and sorghum less important.
To mitigate the effects of drought and ensure food and nutritional security. The County government has been providing farmers with cassava cuttings and helping farmers to construct dairy and adopt fish farming.
In 2019 the county Government gave 200 dairy cows to farmers, and the county has not relented when it comes to cushioning farmers.
According to Mr Nzai, the importance of crop diversification and improved post-harvest handling is key to ensure not only food and nutritional security but also to generate cash income from sale of surplus produce.
He says that most of the problems bedeviling the farmers in Kilifi are lack of information; farmers don’t know what to plant at a particular season regarding the charging rain patterns.
‘’We had the short rains, but because farmers didn’t know what variety of maize to plant they failed terribly ‘’.In addressing this Mr. Nzai says they are planning to conduct farmers field days to give information to the farmers regarding these erratic rains and teach them good African agriculture.
‘’In Ganze sub-county the rains come for one and a half months,the ideal situation was for the farmers to plant green grams ; harvest and sell and in return buy maize’’.
Mr. Nzai says Kilifi County is the only county in the entire country that has three rain seasons.
‘’We have the long rains, mid rains, and short rains, so when the long rains miss, people can plant drought-resistant crops, like cassava, and green grams’’. He says.
Speaking during an interview, Mr. Nzai promised to continue supporting farmers to out-scale the technologies for drought-tolerant crops to the remote county wards and noted that the over-reliance on maize complicates food security, more so in years when rains fail.
