A Sustainable Future

I woke at 5:30 this morning, to the low resonant sounds of hippo’s grunting in the shallows of the Lake. I pulled back the mosquito net that covers my bed and looked out from the balcony over the cool African dawn. The treetops were bathed in orange light and a few small fishing boats had cast their circular nets around the lake shore.

I headed for the shower and an early breakfast.

We headed North today, to the site of our farm, where 10 acres of land gives us food for all of the work of the project. Food security is an important issue in Kenya, where lack of rains can send maize prices rocketing.

We had arranged to meet at 7:00.

Sure enough, on the dot of 7:40 Moses arrived and we headed North, towards Kitale and the villages where our farms are located.

The morning was cool and the air fresh. As we headed out of Kisumu on the road past Mamboleo we picked up Paul James and then climbed the steep hill out of the lake basin.

Rural Nyanza, to the North of Kisumu is beautiful. Steep sided valleys, lush with eucalyptus trees are dotted with the shiny iron sheet roof tops of mud and thatch houses, glinting in the early morning sunshine. Small plots of land surrounding each house are filled with a mixture of crops, some early maize plants, cassava, beans and napier grass for the cattle

After half an hours drive we approached the border of Nyanza and Western Province, crossing the equator into the northern hemisphere at a small metal sign barely worthy of its role at the centre of the world.

In Western Province the maize plantations give way to sugar cane. The big sugar factories at Mumias provide international export markets for small holding farmers, though the prices are low and the farmers here compete with subsidised farmers across the Americas for larger contracts which they hardly ever win. Fair trade it may be, but free trade it certainly isn’t.

It is clear you are in sugar country as the roads are suddenly alive with tractors laden down with badly stacked sugar cane, taking up more of the road than they should and making it impossible to pass.

The large fields of sugar cane give way to small holdings of tea production and fields bordered by banana and mango trees, paw paw and avocados, providing shade and fruit to the homesteads.

We passed through Kakamega, the largest and capital town of Western Province, home to many boda boda’s and a good number of matatu’s and tractors, neither of which make for fast progress!

Not many kilometres north of Kakamega is the Forest Park, home to a wide variety of different monkeys. I often see baboons walking by the roadside, or black and white colobus monkeys in the trees on the short drive through the dense indigenous forest. Today however there were no signs of wildlife and we hurried on our way, through the obligatory police checks either side of the road.

After a couple of hours we arrive in Webuye, where the large paper factory has now laid idle for the last two or three years, reducing the surrounding villages to poverty as the jobs have dried up.

We climbed once more, out of the town, further North still until we arrived at last in Kisikhu, home to one of our two 5 acre plots.

We picked up Steve, a young man who is helping organise our farming activity this year and he led us down a red mud road, along increasingly small trails, where the rain has worn furrows into the surface and made a real bone shaker of a ride. Either side of the car thorns scraped their reminders of this route into the white scarred paintwork as we edged cautiously down the track.

We drove between a barbed wire fence and a line of tall eucalyptus until we emerged at a field edge. “Hapa” said Steve, We are here.

We got out and had a walk around the edge of the 5 acre plot. We have already done the first ploughing, but the tractor had struggled to break up the sugar cane that had been grown here last year and a second ploughing is required before the planting could begin.

We plan to plant a mixture of maize and beans, two staples of the menu in our homes in Kibos and Mamboleo. The beans will be harvested in July, whilst the maize will be harvested in November. From April until July the beans and maize will grow together, then, once we have harvested the beans, the maize will grow high and mature independently.

We need to plant before the rains come in April, as the rains will cause the maize and beans to germinate and help them on their way. The land looked promising. All around the farmers were planting sugar cane, but this is a cash crop and we have hungry mouths to feed. We have opted for food security first, cash may or may not come later.

We then headed off to the second land, some 20 kilometres further north. We have had to farm in two plots this year, as we weren’t able to get 10 acres together.

We drove down some very small, dusty roads for quite a distance, before turning sharp left through a gate into a rural homestead. Instead of the usual mud and thatch huts this one housed a fine brick building, surrounded by barns and sheds.

As we stepped out of the car we were greeted warmly by the owner of the farm, Rasto Ojago.

And Rasto is a passionate and charismatic man. I can only say now, that I believe we have been blessed to find him.

He is renting out 5 acres for the first time this year. He has turned traditional farming methods on their head and turned his whole farm into organic, bio farming. He doesn’t plough his land as he believes it lets moisture escape from the soil, he wont use artificial fertilisers or pesticides on his land as he doesn’t believe they should be in the food chain.

And his harvests and yields are more than double the best we have ever achieved per acre.

As we talk with him we realise that we have been blessed. We are the first to rent his land, he wants to evangelise his farming methods, show them to people who are interested and help to change the way that traditional rural agriculture is viewed. He has a contract to supply the government with 5,000 bags of maize next year and he hopes to share what he has learned with Steve and our organisation.

As we sat under a mango tree back at Steve's home, with his family, we talked about what we had seen.

It will be an interesting year. We have one plot that we will farm using traditional methods and another using the organic soil conservation route.

I hope and pray that the latter wins. If it does, we have already agreed on ten acres for next year.

I believe that our move to sustainable food production has begun.