Kenya has embarked on a programme to encourage planting of high value drought resistant crops to improve food security and discourage reliance on maize as staple.The promotion of traditional high value drought resistant crops is a strategy to cope with climate change challenges and repeated droughts especially in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid regions.The East African nation and its neighbour Somalia were hard hit by drought last year, which led to hunger and starvation that affected over 3.5 million people.The crops being promoted under the strategy include sweet potatoes,cassava, pigeon and cow peas.Others are green grams, sorghum, finger millet, pearl millet and variousvarieties of drought resistant maize.Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture is spearheading the initiative dubbed Traditional High Value Crops programme.In the programme, the ministry is identifying different crops that do well invarious districts in the country and distributing seeds to farmers.Assistant Minister for Agriculture Gideon Ndambuki noted that Kenya has increased its budget on drought resistant crops in this financial year. Farmers will get drought resistant seeds free of charge for planting worth 1.5 million dollars.“The government will provide 726 metric tonnes of assorted drought resistant food crop planting materials worth 1.5 million U. S. dollars. This will include 5 million sweet potato vines worth 24,096 dollars and 15 metric tonnes of cassava cuttings worth 9, 939 dollars,” said the minister when he started distribution of 227 metric tonnes of drought resistant seeds and ten metric tonnes of Irish potatoes in Nairobi last week.The initiative targets 117 districts and 30 counties that include semi-arid areas of Turkana in Rift Valley and Kilifi in Coast provinces. To enhance steady supply of seeds, the ministry has partnered with Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari).“Kari stations at Egoji, Marimati, and Katumani were funded by the World Bank and the European Union to rehabilitate their irrigation schemes to bulk the crops. They procured equipment and materials to improve their capacity to bulk high value traditional crops as seed,” says the ministry in a report on the programme.Since the programme started, the ministry has supplied over 4, 000metric tonnes of drought resistant seeds worth 8.2 million dollars to over 2 million farmers.Jane Navala, a resident of Western Kenya is one such a farmer who has benefitted from the programme.The 39-year-old living in Budalangi district said on March 3 that she has prepared over an acre piece of land where she will plant millet, sorghum and cassava. “These are the only crops that do well in this region because thearea is dry and we always have erratic rains. Maize does not perform well,” she noted.Navala said she is expecting a variety of seedlings from the governmentbefore the end of this month to plant.w“Last year, they gave us seeds and send officers to educate us onhow to plant and take care of the crops. This year, I believe they are going todo the same because the challenges may be different, for instance, the dry spell may be long,” she said.
