Kenya Diaries: Day 17, Part 2 - Dominion Farms, Part 2

On my 17th day in Kenya, I visited Dominion Farms, a U.S.-owned enormous rice farm that sits in between Bondo and Siaya Districts in Nyanza Province.



To get a tour of Dominion Farms, you need an appointment. Malaki's cousin used to work at Dominion, and he hooked Amy and Malaki (my hosts) up with a contact there, who gave them an appointment.

We drove from Malaki's village to Dominion, arriving at a large, guarded gate on the Bondo side of the swamp. There was some confusion as we tried to get in. The guard did not want to let us in, it seemed, and Amy tried to call her contact's cell phone. He kept telling her he was busy with a big group of Nigerians, but as luck had it, he was right near us - and so were all of the Nigerians. As he talked to the guard and helped secure our admission, the Nigerians kept trying to take pictures of us strange-looking white people, shoving cameras right in our faces.

Once we were through the gate with instructions to go to the office to sign in, we were on our own. I had a smudge on my camera lens, but we could see - and I took pictures of - a combine in the field and a crop duster spraying god knows what from the sky.





Both outside and inside the gate, one could see people carrying water or other things on their heads. All around, we could see a diverse array of birds, which made me really excited to see them, and horrifically sad that they were losing their habitat and ingesting pesticides.




African spoonbill


Chemical sludge in the water


Crested Cranes. You always see them in pairs.


Not sure about the species of these


A kind of grainy close-up, in case someone else can recognize 'em


That dust cloud is NOT just the smudge on my camera lens. Is that simply exhaust fumes or is it the topsoil eroding away?

At last, we reached the office, which was just outside Dominion's Siaya gate.


Just outside the office, which has more security

For a tour, Dominion charges a hefty fee for each small tour bus, and more for a large tour bus. Amy tried to bargain the price down since we were just a small car with three adults and a baby, and because they were locals. Shouldn't locals have inexpensive access to see this farm that is right in their backyard? Apparently not. I paid the full fee for our "tour bus" of three people, Amy signed the guest book, and we were officially "in."

With that, a tour guide got in our car, and off we went. We might have been lucky because she was new - we were the first group she gave a tour to - and she wasn't very good at evading questions she wasn't supposed to answer. However, on the flipside, she also didn't know a lot of answers to questions we asked.

The guide - a very attractive woman who had recently graduated college - began by saying that in 2003, Calvin Burgess, the founder, began Dominion Farms. They began by clearing the land and preparing fields for rice farming. But before they were ready to do rice, they had a few other projects like growing maize that they did in the meantime. Once the land was ready for rice, they let the other projects go.

Guide: The reason we stopped growing maize is that the land on which you grow maize does not need as much preparation as the land on which you grow rice. So on your left, you see the rice, and you see the bananas? That's rice husk. We use it for mulching to get rid of the grass.

So basically, the rice milling we started in 2006 and it's been going on strong. So we have almost 4000 acres we've reclaimed. This was all a swamp. There used to be nothing here. It was just a total swamp. So we had to reclaim it. If you go to the weir, you'll see how we reclaimed it. We use the water for many things. There is rice. If you go this way, there is rice. There is, of course, fish, and that's basically it. And then there's domestic use on the other side. That is, like, houses.

Amy Lint: How many workers are here?

Guide: I'm not very sure but I think not more than 400.

AL: So everybody has housing on property or does some come from outside?

Guide: Most of them are the villagers.

AL: I mean, so they stay outside the compound?

Guide: Yeah, they stay in their homes.

AL: Some commute?

Guide: It's a very short distance, like 10 minutes. So they just walk from their houses.

Here, what you are seeing is a flooded field. It has been planted, and then after planting we put in water immediately. Then it stays for four to five days.

A just planted flooded rice field

Guide: Then we drain out the water and harden the crop. We let it get used to the sun, because we don't do wet farming. We do not put it in water from day 1 to the end. So that means if we do not harden it off, it may die easily. So after four to five days we drain it, leave it to harden for one month, we flash back water, and wait for it to mature.

An unflooded field being hardened off.

At this point, I was getting into my groove. I'd seen some rice in the Philippines but then I read an entire dissertation about the International Rice Research Institute, so I had a few questions for her...

Me: So you don't transplant?

Guide: No, we don't transplant. That's what we do back where I come from. Here we just do direct seeding.

[Historically, rice was always planted in a seedbed and then transplanted into the field. During the Green Revolution, IRRI was very interested in finding a way to direct seed the rice and skip the transplanting step. So the fact that they direct seed is interesting for that reason.]

Me: Do you use a machine, or do people do the direct seeding by hand?

Guide: We use machines. You'll see them. That's where we are going. The first stop will be machinery.

Me: Do you know the variety you grow?

Guide: Yes. It's a special breed that was actually made here. It's - okay, they are just numbers. It's 103 and 107.

Me: Are they early maturing?

[Another goal of the Green Revolution. If the rice matures quickly, then you can grow several crops on the same land each year.]

Guide: They take 120 days.

AL: So what are all these people doing here?

Guide: The ladies at the end? They are either gapping or weeding, but considering the field, they must be gapping. That means, once we have grown the seed and you drained off the water, there isn't 100% viability. Some seed doesn't grow. So there are some fields that we have to grow seedlings that we use to fill in the gaps so that we have a full crop. So that's what they are doing.

Me: So you do that by hand and weeding by hand?

Guide: Weeding is also done by hand.

Me: Do you also use some herbicides?

Guide: Yes. We have an integrated method of controlling weeds. That is the manual method of hand weeding, then there is the selective herbicide, and there is also the flooding. You know, rice is a friend of water, so it grows well in water. But other plants do not grow in water.

Me: Do you know which herbicides are the best ones to use?

Guide: Maybe we can ask somebody else. But there is a plane that is going around right now, and it is spraying the herbicides. It also sprays fungicides and fertilizer.

Me: All of that together?

Guide: No, we have a schedule.

AL: What's the schedule? How often?

Guide: We try to minimize the chemicals we use. But there is a pre-emergent and a post-emergent herbicide. That means before the weeds start to grow, then after the rice has started growing and the weeds as well.

So this is a harvester. We use a combined harvester. So here we've already harvested it. We may leave it like this and get another crop. It's called a rattoon. Or we may just cultivate it again and wait another 120 days. But if it's a rattoon, it only takes two months and the cost of production is much much lower.

Me: Is this ready to harvest?

Guide: Yeah, this is ready to harvest.

Mature rice


Stuff growing among the rice. I thought I saw something move in there and tried to see if it was a frog or something, but saw nothing.

AL: How many acres are under production at once? Do you use the same land every time or do you rotate?

Guide: We have to do rotation. When this harvest is ending, the next one is ready, so that the mill always has rice.

AL: And how many acres is under cultivation at one time?

Guide: Right now, we are harvesting like 10 fields and the acreage is like between 40 and 70 acres each field. And we are harvesting ten of them right now. And that will last us until the next harvest. So as you see, it's different stages. So there's a program that's used to run that.

So this is basically our machinery area. We have tractors. We have the disc plow, this is our lawn mower. We have serrated disc plows and just plain disc plows.

Let me just go through the land reclamation process. What happens, there's the really, really big ones. There's the bulldozers and the land planes that go and clear the land first of all. Then we go and till it, primary and secondary tillage. After that, maybe we go and dig the ground and then put in the seeds, and compact the soil so that it doesn't wash off the seeds.

Malaki Obado: How do you fuel it?

Guide: Oh yeah we have fueling stations, three of them.

MO: Within the farm?

Guide: Yes, within the premises. So a tanker comes and brings the fuel.

AL: For how long do you plan to grow rice here?

Guide: Umm, I don't think we are ever planning to stop.

AL: Like, who owns the land. Isn't it the Kenyan government?

Guide: Yes. I don't have access to the agreement, so I don't know how long.

Coming up in the next diary: Dominion's canals and weir, tilapia farming, and the mill.

Kenya Diaries: Day 17, Part 1 - Dominion Farms, Part 1

On my 17th day in Kenya, I visited Dominion Farms, a U.S.-owned enormous rice farm that sits in between Bondo and Siaya Districts in Nyanza Province. See below.

My introduction to Dominion Farms first came from a document called "Land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique A report on two research missions – and a human rights analysis of land grabbing," published by the FIAN International Secretariat in 2010.

The Yala Swamp wetlands are located on the northeastern shoreline of Lake Victoria and are crossed by the equator. It is one of the most important riparian and floodplain wetlands around the lake, and indeed one of the largest in Kenya. The swamp forms the mouth of both the Nzoia and Yala Rivers and is a freshwater deltaic wetland arising from backflow of water from Lake Victoria as well as the rivers’ floodwaters. It provides a very important habitat for refugee populations of certain fish species which have otherwise disappeared from the lake. The wetlands cover an area commonly cited as 17,500 hectares (175 km2) and contain three freshwater lakes: Kanyaboli (1,500 hectares), Sare, and Namboyo. Other reports suggest that the swamp is much larger with a total area of 38,000 - 52,000 hectares. The swamp stretches 25 km from W-E and 15 km from N-S at the lakeshore.

This huge wetland ecosystem, third largest in the country after the Lorian Swamp and the Tana River Delta, provides major ecological and hydrological functions and is a major source of livelihoods for the neighboring communities. It is a highly productive ecosystem. According to Birdlife International, “The Yala swamp complex is by far the largest papyrus swamp in the Kenyan sector of Lake Victoria, making up more than 90% of the total area of papyrus. The swamp acts as a natural filter for a variety of biocides and other agricultural pollutants from the surrounding catchment, and also effectively removes silt before the water enters Lake Victoria. The site supports an important local fishery for the Luo and Luhya people who live to its south and north, respectively”.

Remember what malaria expert Andrew Githeko said about papyrus swamps. They don't have any malaria. Clear the swamp and turn it into a rice paddy and the malarial mosquitoes will thank you.

The Yala swampland is a trust land under the custody of the Siaya and Bondo County councils on behalf of the government. With a population of about half a million, it is densely populated. For a long time, the local people accessed it and used it in their various daily activities on a free access basis. With the entry and take over by a US based company in 2003, this came to an abrupt halt and resulted in a loss of one of the most important assets for the local community to secure their livelihoods – the land.

In 2003, Dominion Farms Ltd, a subsidiary of Dominion Group of Companies based in Edmond, Oklahoma, USA, made its appearance in the Yala swamp. The initial proposal was that Dominion would engage in rice production, in part of the swamp known as Area I, covering about 2,300 hectares. This land portion had been reclaimed by the Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA) before 1970 and previously used for agricultural activity, mainly to produce cereals, pulses and horticultural crops. Later in the same year, Dominion entered into a lease agreement with both the Siaya and Bondo County Councils covering 6,900 hectares of the 17,500 hectare wetlands under the Yala Swamp Integrated Development Project for duration of 25 years, with a possibility of extension. Eventually, Dominion proposed to cover the entire swamp region of 17,500 hectares.

Dominion was ushered in by a coalition of local politicians and evangelical pastors who even organized massive demonstrations in favor of the investment. At the beginning there was much optimism among the population: Dominion had promised jobs, school, clinics and an upsurge of the local economy in general. The infrastructure left behind by LBDA was worn down and poverty was rife in the malaria-infested swamp region.

However, disillusion set in soon. According to residents of Siaya and Bondo counties, there was employment for some 200 workers for no more than six months when brushwood and undergrowth was removed in the area. For instance, a 60 year old man was hired as a subcontractor with a team of twelve. The workers were paid 200 shillings per day (approximately 2.6 USD) and the team leader received an additional 50 shillings. Today, according to the villagers in Bondo and Siaya,there is permanent employment only for a handful of watchmen (60, according to Dominion’s homepage) who are paid around 7,000 shillings (approximately 90 USD) per month. A watchman questioned by the research team at the gate of Dominion farm refused to reveal details about his contract and said that he was not allowed to speak to strangers.

In the rice fields, women can be seen armed with sticks to chase away the birds which prey on the cereal. According to villagers, they have to stand in the mud from dusk to dawn for a miserable pay and even remain there when the plantation is sprayed with pesticides. Neighbors suspect it is DDT as fowl and plants have died after the spraying. There is ample evidence of poisoned fowl and plants in the vicinity of the plantation. Villagers claim that even the cattle are destroyed by contaminated water. When interviewed, a villager replied “We took the livestock to market and found that the liver was rotten. We had to bury them, could not even allow dogs to eat them.” Dominion is indeed alleged to have sought an exemption from the worldwide ban of DDT from Kenya’s Ministry of Health supposedly to combat malaria. The incidence of malaria, however, is still high. Some claim it is higher now than before Dominion built dykes and cut off the natural flow of the swamp waters.

Charming place, huh? About the DDT, I personally saw no evidence and I heard rumors they were using carbofuran but could not get my source to give me any credible proof or way to verify that. But they certainly are spraying something - I saw it myself and took pictures. The number of people employed has grown a bit too, although not by much, and it appears that locals only get the unskilled, low wage jobs while educated outsiders get the higher paid positions. By the time I visited in February 2012, the women standing in rice paddies scaring away birds had shifted from shaking sticks at them to containers filled with rocks.

In 2003, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was commissioned by the NEMA for large-scale rice production. Authorities approved the EIA specifically for rice irrigation in a 2,300 hectare-area (about 13% of the Yala Swamp territory). Almost immediately Dominion began building irrigation dykes and a weir, airstrips and roads, and announced plans to build a hydroelectric plant and a major aquaculture venture, including fish farms, a fish processing factory and a fish mill factory, all of which could damage a fragile ecosystem far beyond the designated 2,300 hectare area.

Dominion Farm Limited operates on the basis of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Dominion directors and the chairmen of Bondo and Siaya county councils in May, 2003. According to this MoU, the councils pledge to lease to Dominion another 3,200 hectares approximately (“the Additional Area”) in addition to 3,700 hectares – in total 6,900 hectares - set aside for large scale agricultural purposes. The MoU makes no reference to those who may live on the land earmarked for lease to Dominion. A lawyer in Nairobi, who was commissioned by the Institute of Law and Environmental Governance, assumes that there must be thousands of people who have been in occupation of the land by virtue of ancestral rights. One analysis criticizes that “no mention is made of these people. It is inconceivable that 3700 hectares of arable/agricultural land in a rural area would be lying idle without even persons who may be referred to as squatters. Provision must therefore be made for the original occupants. In my view, the County Councils should have given these individuals first priority if this land was required to be allocated or leased out to anyone.”

Indeed, there are entire villages of farmers whose families had been there for generations in the “Additional Area”. The majority do not have any titles to prove their claims. Some, however, had actually purchased the land and were assigned a parcel number which was supposed to be later replaced by a formal title deed. For example, the father of a 33 year old farmer from Aduwa village bought eight acres (roughly three hectares) of land in 1975. The soil is extremely fertile which has made the family quite prosperous...

In 2004, Dominion offered to buy his land for 45,000 shillings/acre (approximately 600 USD), roughly a third of the market price. The farmer refused because he knew that for the meager compensation he would be unable to buy a plot the same size and equal quality anywhere else. One acre yields 24 bags of maize per harvest. At a price of 3,000 shillings (about 400USD) per bag of maize and two harvests a year, each acre produces around 144,000 shillings (around 1,893USD), more than thrice what Dominion offered to pay for the land. A few weeks after refusing to sell his land, the farmer found his fields flooded and his crops destroyed. He is sure that Dominion had opened the sluices of the weir to inundate the plots of stubborn farmers. When he complained, he was chased by the police “who were ferried in Dominion vehicles.”

The same happened to another farmer. Of a nine acre plot, eight acres were flooded. Dominion paid 45,000 shillings for this one acre and took the whole plot. The farmer says he accepted out of need. When he went to complain about the flooding, Dominion sent him to the county council as the owner of the land: “The county council said, the area is for government, you cool down, nothing will be done.” In another case, a 29 year old farmer, whose father possesses 15 acres in Syaia county directly adjacent to the Dominion estate, reports that an offer by Dominion to buy his parcel came immediately after six acres were flooded. The family refused. A woman 60 years of age from Yoro village, Bondo, says that the deliberate flooding of her land, inherited from her late husband who died in 1989, destroyed her crops of maize, beans, vegetables, 40 heads of cattle and five houses. Another farmer, 50 years old, who lives in the same village, lost 30 heads of cattle, 45 sheep and 60 goats in a flooding. Complaints with the local authorities were not attended. According to InterPress Service (ips) “the government has dismissed such allegations saying it is not aware of any complaints from communities in the Yala River area.”

“The idea behind the flooding is a way of pushing people away”, says a member of Siaya County Council. He alleges that Dominion controls all the local institutions: “They even managed to bribe the media. When floods occur you won’t see media.” The member, who has been campaigning against Dominion for several years, says that he was offered the post of PR officer by Dominion with a monthly salary of 120,000 shillings, airtime for the mobile phone of 7,000 shillings per week, and a car with fuel. He refused. The member, who wants to be reelected in 2011 and become chairman of the county council, accuses local politicians of having accepted bribes: “Some MPs have built their houses with Dominion money”. The mansion of a former MP stands on a hill overlooking the Southern shore of Lake Kanyaboli. It is fenced in and guarded by a watchman. The power line ends at his house. He is the man who initially brought Dominion to the swamp.

So... welcome to Dominion... My goal was to find out how much of this report I could personally verify by visiting and see what else there was to know about Dominion Farms.

Kenya Diaries: Day 14 - The Kisumu Yacht Club

On the 13th day of my trip, I flew from Nairobi to Kisumu. It's a very short flight, but would have been a very long bus-ride. The next day, I arranged to meet a man named Andrew Githeko, who turned out to be kind of a big deal. And by kind of a big deal, I mean that he was part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore.

When I arrived in Kisumu, I got in a cab and gave the driver the name of a hotel I found online. I had no idea if it was any good, but since none of the hotels I found online seemed to have working phone numbers listed or much information available about them, I was going to take my chances. If nothing else, there was another hotel two doors down I could walk to. But the car didn't even leave the airport parking lot for at least 30 minutes. The road was closed down because the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, was expected to pass. He was meeting the President of Uganda. Odinga, the cab driver told me, was from Bondo District, where I would spend most of the next week. The streets were lined with Kenyans who wanted to see him.

The hotel was nice enough, and they charged 1500 shillings ($18) for a room without a TV or 2000 ($24) shillings for one with a TV. Only they didn't have any TV-less rooms available. I didn't want to pay for a TV I can't watch anyway, so I walked to the other hotel to see what it was like. They had only one rate, 1700 shillings. So I paid for one night. It was a bad idea.

The place was a mosquito-ridden hole. It was so hot that I got under the mosquito net and then sat there in my underwear, using my computer. The room had two sockets, but only one worked at a time. I had to alternate between running the fan and charging my computer. The light in the bathroom did not work, and the next day I found out the shower had no hot water. Plus there was no toilet seat. After eating breakfast and avoiding the pitcher of milk that had a fly floating in it, I took my luggage over to the first hotel and got a room without a TV but WITH a toilet seat, hot water, and enough electricity to use the fan and charge the computer at once.

Then Andrew picked me up. Initially I planned to visit the East Africa Dairy Development project on this day. I'd been emailing with them and I really wanted to learn about their work. It's funded by the Gates Foundation and run by Heifer International and the International Livestock Research Institute. But my contact had gone totally incommunicado with me, so I told Andrew I was free. Since he was free too, we decided it was a good time to meet. I had NO idea what to expect.

Andrew showed up in a nice car and drove us straight to the Kisumu Yacht Club. We walked in and he ordered a drink - some kind of hard alcohol, I think. I figured this was probably the right time to try Kenya's beer, Tusker, so I did. It's kind of like Budweiser. I switched over to water without finishing my beer.

The yacht club was lovely, as I imagine yacht clubs generally are. It was right on the shores of Lake Victoria, the second largest lake in the world, which Kenya shares with Uganda and Tanzania. We said our hellos to the regulars, and spoke to an American wearing a USAID hat.

It turned out he was in the Peace Corps. His family was visiting him, so he brought them here for the day. He told me to check out the jaboya trade. Essentially, when fishermen bring in their catch, they sell it to women, and then the women sell it to whoever. Only, fishermen often refuse to sell the fish for money alone. They want sex too. Nyanza Province, where Kisumu and Lake Victoria are located, has the highest AIDS rate in Kenya. The Peace Corps volunteer told me they have a project to help these women become proper businesswomen as a way to stamp out the jaboya trade. I replied that it seemed to me they already were businesswomen. The oldest business, even.


Kisumu Yacht Club






(I was assured that this area has hippos but no crocs, usually. They saw one croc a while ago but none before or after.)

Andrew and I sat down and talked about malaria and climate change for a long time. I'll transcribe our interview in the next diary. He was fascinating. You can see him speak here and there's actually a book chapter written about him and his work (Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It).

As we spoke, the club got more and more crowded. When I had asked him every single malaria-related question I could think of, I turned the audio recorder off and we just hung out. We joined a group of others, and they asked if he was going out on the lake today. But the water was rough, and no sane person was going out. In fact, the only person who did go out was a white man, an American who people suspect is actually a CIA agent. He loves rough water and always goes out when no one else will. Everyone else sat around, smoked, and drank.

An enormous black leather couch sat outside the club, and several people asked the staff "Is this where the big man sat?" Then they filled me in. The Prime Minister and President of Uganda ate their dinner here last night. And yes, they did sit on the couch.

After the interview, I wasn't quite sure what I was still doing there, although I had no other plans for the day and knew nobody in Kisumu, and the yacht club was truly lovely. Andrew asked if I'd like to stay for lunch so I agreed. Literally HOURS later, well past noon, close to what I'd call dinner time even, the group got started cooking lunch.

Most of the group was Indian, and I think Andrew was the only Kenyan and I was the only mzungu (white person). Andrew is Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya, but a minority in Nyanza Province. Indians, which Kenyans call Asians, have been in the country for over a century, because the British brought them over to build a railroad and many of those who didn't die while building it stayed. Those who were successful in business in Kenya often brought their families over, so now Kenya has a decent sized Indian population and many Indian-owned businesses. Some have never even visited India!

The meal cooked was all meat - a beef dish and a chicken dish - and it was nothing that I recognized as Indian or Kenyan. It was well spiced and delicious, and by the time it was served I was so hungry, I didn't care that there wasn't a vegetarian option. Anyway, it really did taste good.

After a relaxing day of eating, drinking, and shooting the shit, it was time to go back to my hotel, where I would feel grateful as I took a hot shower and then simultaneously ran the fan while charging the computer.

Slums, AIDS, and barefoot, hungry orphans are one side of Kenya, but there's another side that lives in the world of the Kisumu Yacht Club. After such a nice day, I knew the rest of my week would be spent in a mud hut, definitely without running water, and perhaps without electricity. The week turned out to be the best week of the whole trip, but at that point I was really worried about it.

Because the friend I was staying with in Bondo warned me that they didn't have a lot of food around and suggested I buy some to bring with me, I asked Andrew to drop me off at the grocery store, and he did. From there, I took a motorbike home. It seems that Kenyan grocery stores sell two types of food and almost nothing in between. There are basic staples one uses for cooking - rice, beans, wheat, maize flour - and there are processed foods like chips, cookies, and bread made with "permitted class II preservative." I figured they'd have things like maize, fruits, and vegetables where I was going, and I didn't want chips and cookies.

I settled on the largest container of water I could carry, several mangoes and bananas, peanut butter, Kenyan acacia honey, preservative-free bread, organic Kenyan coffee, a few Cadbury chocolate bars, organic macadamia nuts, and some moringa, which I planned to bring home with me. (Moringa's a "superfood" that grows in Kenya, and it actually grows in Bondo, only I didn't know that when I bought it.) Somehow, I was able to carry all of this while riding the motorbike back to the hotel.

Kenya Table of Contents

Diaries from my trip to Kenya, February 2012:
Travel and Arrival
Day 1, Part 1: Elephants and Giraffes and Crocs, Oh My! (Part 1)
Day 1, Part 2: Elephants and Giraffes and Crocs, Oh My! (Part 2)
Day 2: Kibera, Nairobi's Enormous Slum
Day 3, Part 1: From Nairobi to Thika
Day 3, Part 2: Helping Women and Farmers Out of Poverty (G-BIACK)
Day 3, Part 3: G-BIACK's Livestock
Day 3, Part 4: Grow Biointensive (G-BIACK)
Day 3, Part 5: Traditional Kenyan Food and a Visit to a Farm
Day 4, Part 1: Del Monte Pineapple
Day 4, Part 2: Robert's Farm (G-BIACK)
Day 4, Part 3: A School for Special Needs Young Adults (G-BIACK)
Day 5, Part 1: One More Morning at G-BIACK
Day 5, Part 2: Sustainable Ag and Rural Development Initiative (SARDI)
Day 5, Part 3: Workshop on Nutrition, Farming, and HIV/AIDS
Day 6, Part 1: A Small, Biointensive Farm (SARDI)
Day 6, Part 2: The School That Broke My Heart (SARDI)
Day 6, Part 3: Farming in a Wet Region, Part 1 (SARDI)
Day 6, Part 4: Farming in a Wet Region, Part 2 (SARDI)
Day 7: Nairobi
Day 8, Part 1: Wildlife and Poachers
Day 8, Part 2: The Machakos Market
Day 9: Removing Poachers' Snares
Day 10: Removing Poachers' Snares
Day 11, Part 1: Intro to Pastoralism and Maasai Culture
Day 11, Part 2: Interview with a Maasai Man, Part 1
Day 11, Part 3: Interview with a Maasai Man, Part 2
Day 11, Part 4: Interview with a Maasai Man, Part 3
Day 11: Part 5: Visit to a Maasai Home
Day 12: Nairobi
Day 13: Travel to Kisumu
Day 14, Part 1: The Kisumu Yacht Club
Day 14, Part 2: Malaria and the Climate Crisis
Day 15: Travel to Bondo
Day 16, Part 1: Welcome to Bondo
Day 16, Part 2: Thirsty Animals
Day 16, Part 3: Tour of Farming in Bondo, Part 1 (Grow Strong)
Day 16, Part 4: Tour of Farming in Bondo, Part 2 (Grow Strong)
Day 16, Part 5: Tour of Farming in Bondo, Part 3 (Grow Strong)
Day 16, Part 6: Care for the Earth
Day 17, Part 1: Dominion Farms, Part 1
Day 17, Part 2: Dominion Farms, Part 2
Day 17, Part 3: Dominion Farms, Part 3
Day 17, Part 4: Dominion Farms, Part 4
Day 17, Part 5: BAMA
Day 18, Part 1: Interview with Florence Ogendi, A Small Farmer
Day 18, Part 2: Interview with William, a Small Farmer
Day 18, Part 3: Mzee, The Basket Maker
Day 19, Part 1: A Different Approach to Livestock
Day 19, Part 2: Selene's Chicken and Beer Business
Day 19, Part 3: The Bondo Market
Day 20: Charity's Charity

Kenya Diaries: Day 6, Part 4 - Biointensive Farming in a Wet Region, Part 2 (SARDI)

Day 6 was a long day. After visiting a small farm in a semi-arid region and a nearby primary school (grades 1-8), we headed off to a nearby wet region to see some farms there. This is the second post about those farms.

Recall that the community we were visiting decided all together to go organic and adopt biointensive farming with the help of SARDI (Sustainable Ag & Rural Dev Initiative). The 15 farms each border a river so the farmers have as much water as they can carry - unless they have a water pump.

We left the farm of Waithera Kimotho and walked a short distance to the home and farm of Simon Kiarie. Like so many communities in the Global South, they didn't have roads - they have trails. After all, no one has a car.


Simon in front of his home

Simon is one of five brothers. His father had five acres and it was split among the brothers so that each now farms one acre. Simon began farming here in 1979. Simon says that the farms in this area are each one acre or less. Actually, Simon's wife Peris does the work on this farm because Simon was injured several years ago and now cannot handle anything beyond light work. They do not employ anyone else to work on the farm.

Simon and Peris had four children. They have two girls who are married, one boy who died, and one remaining son. Their son is in fifth grade, and his school costs 14,800 shillings ($178) per term. They had to sell their livestock to pay for his school.

When he began farming here, Simon used chemicals. But they stopped using chemicals two years ago. They were influenced to do so by a program they heard on the radio, and they decided to just give it a try. The chemicals were expensive, Peris said, and they didn't help them. "The fertilizer is very expensive and the product is not all that much," said Peris. "It hardens the soil and increases the salt," added Simon.

Simon and his wife impressed me with their sophistication. First Simon showed me his tissue culture bananas. Then he showed me an avocado tree that had two different varieties of avocado grafted onto it. He said he did the grafting himself.


Tissue culture bananas


Sweet potatoes


Avocados

He sells both the bananas and the sweet potatoes. He also grows amaranth, cassava, mangoes, papaya, coffee, maize, beans, onions, and cowpeas. The maize and beans are intercropped, and he does not grow enough to sell any. However, after switching to organic, they had enough extra maize to give some to their child's school to offset their tuition costs. They grow two maize crops per year. One is planted in March and harvested in August, and then they plant again in October.

Simon and Peris irrigate with water from the river but they have to carry it by hand because they do not have a pump.


HUGE cassava plant

Next door, Simon's brother has coffee trees that are loaded with unripe fruit. He is the sole member of this community who has refused to go organic, and he uses chemicals on his coffee. Kenyans don't really drink coffee - this is all for sale.

Simon also grows coffee, but he doesn't have as much fruit on his. His wife says she doesn't have enough manure for the coffee now so she won't get a harvest. And she says the chemicals you need are very expensive. It sounds like even though the rest of the farm is organic, the coffee might not be. Peris added that coffee needs enough water and when there is enough rain and she has enough manure, she harvests 1000 kg. Neither brother uses shade trees for their coffee at all.


Simon's brother's coffee - NOT organic.


Simon's coffee

I asked Simon about the difference once he switched to organic. He said "Once I began using manure, it grows big."


Papaya


Compost


Double dug field


The farm


Gravillea, a popular tree to grow in this area


A newly planted bed of cowpeas and onions.

During our visit, they were burning the remains of their last corn crop and said they would spread the ash on the field. Francis advised them to compost it instead of burning.

I tried to ask Peris about her yields back when she used chemicals. "Once we used fertilizer, we had to use other chemicals for spraying. Pesticides," she said. But she said she doesn't need to use that now. She just uses manure. I didn't get a very clear answer from her about yields but it sounded like the yields were determined by how much rain there is. She said she needs about 3 90 kg bags of maize to feed her family and she can usually produce that much on her farm, but if the rains fail, she won't get it.

She said, "There's not enough rain anymore... Before it was really proper rain. There was heavy rain early. By February, we get enough rain. March - up to... But this time, there is not enough rain." She wants a water pump. That would cost 40,000 shillings, or $480.

Another issue Peris brought up is that there is sometimes theft. People will come to the farm and steal her harvest.

We then took a walk from Simon's farm to see a few other farms along the river. We ended at Waithera's farm.




Black nightshade, a popular Kenyan crop. They eat the leaves. I tasted it and did not like it much.


Black nightshade ripe fruit


Black nightshade, flowering.

As we walked, a little boy named Wilson would tap me on the back occasionally and point out various plants. He was one of the neighbor's kids. Age 12. When we ended at Waithera's home, I took this picture of him:



We ended by taking a photo of everybody:

Kenya Diaries: Day 6, Part 3 - Biointensive Farming in a Wet Region, Part 1 (SARDI)

Day 6 was a long day. After visiting a small farm in a semi-arid region and a nearby primary school (grades 1-8), we headed off to a nearby wet region to see some farms there.


Best. Picture. Ever!!!! (Read his shirt)

Kenya is split between wet, semi-arid, and arid zones. The mountainous wet zones are used to grow some of the top cash crops - tea and coffee. Thika itself is in a semi-arid zone but it is not far from a wetter area. Francis had recently begun working in the wet area too so he could compare farming there with farming in the semi-arid region. To get there, we rode a matatu, Kenya's privately run mini-buses that seat 15 (including the driver) but regularly cram 20+ people in to earn as much money as possible. Unlike a public bus, matatus will stop and drop you off or pick you up anywhere along the route. This is nice because you can go exactly where you want, and not nice because you have to stop all the time so that everyone else can go exactly where they want.


A market near the junction where we went to catch our matatu

While in Kenya, I heard 2 funny sayings. One is that there's always room for one more person in a matatu. The second is 'matatu matata.' Matata is Swahili for 'trouble.' As in 'hakuna matata.' Both sayings are true. I'd add that if you can get the matatu door shut, then you definitely have room for at least 2 more people. And just when people start to leave the matatu and you get comfortable because you've got a seat all to yourself, that's when the driver will sit and wait so he can fill up the car before driving further.

The nicest thing I can say about the matatu is: it's cheap. A ride that costs $50 in a private car with a driver will cost less than $2 in a matatu. As we drove to the wet region, I was glad to have Francis with me to make sure we got charged a fair price and to make sure we got our change after we paid too. A mzungu like me riding alone is sure to get overcharged.

While we road, the scenery changed. Suddenly, the plants around us were green! We got off and then set off away from the road for a small village. Their entire community decided together to go organic, and every single farmer except for one has done so. To make the transition, they are working with SARDI (Sustainable Ag & Rural Development Initiative) and they are using the Grow Biointensive method of farming.


The view as we approached the village. The area across the river had terraces but I did not really observe terraces where we were.

We walked up to a house with a cow and then stopped. Several people met us and then we continued walking down the hill toward a river. I felt compelled to ask whether this river also contained hippos - or for that matter, crocs. No, neither. A little less exciting for me, but ultimately a very good thing for local farmers.

We started by a small plant nursery, where I was introduced to the farmers, Waithera Kimotho and her husband Francis Kimotho. Waithera's the farmer. They've been working with SARDI for five months. We were joined by their neighbor Simon Kiarie. They walked me through the farm from the nursery all the way down to the riverside, where the property ended. They told me this land was only 1/4 acre but it seemed bigger. No bigger than an acre though. It was not a large farm.


Nursery


Waithera and Francis Kimotho



The couple was married in the 1980s and they have seven children. The oldest child is 32 years old. They use the river water for irrigation. They used to carry the water in buckets but with the extra money they made since going organic, they bought a water pump. To grow their crops, they often plant seeds in a seed bed and then transplant the seedlings.

Before working with SARDI, Waithera used chemicals. I asked if she's had any problems with using organic methods. She said she has not experienced any problems - she's getting robust yields. She said she grows 'pole pole' in a good way. "Pole pole" is Swahili for little by little. In the past, sometimes when she would use chemicals, she would have stomach problems after eating the crops. Back then, the pests would eat the crops even though she used chemicals to kill them. Now, she no longer has pest problems.

Waithera found SARDI at a nearby training session and she approached them to work with them. Her farm is entirely run on family labor - no hired help. She says that organic farming is actually easier - less labor - than farming with chemicals.


Kale a.k.a. sukumawiki


Kale

As you look at photos of the farm, you'll see that the soil here is red. They call it Kikuyu Red Soil. The people here are from the Kikuyu ethnic group, the largest ethnic group in Kenya. At this farm, Waithera grows cabbage, kale, papaya, avocado, banana, passionfruit, spinach, French beans, cowpeas, Gravillea, cassava, maize, beans, and flowers. They eat the food they grow, and they sell the crops to earn an income as well.


Notice the spacing. They have beds that are a few feet wide with aisles in between.


These beds are not weed-free. But nor are the weeds overtaking the plants and preventing the farmer from getting a good crop.


Maize used as windbreaks, trees intercropped with plants. The tall trees are gravillea (a popular tree crop here, which I assume is used as lumber and/or fuel) and the one in the front is papaya. Looks like the crop might be green beans.


Banana trees







No doubt you've noticed that the various beds are in different stages of growth. Some are just planted, others are more mature plants. Grow Biointensive, which was developed in northern California where there is year-round good weather and irrigation water too, teaches farmers to do this so they always have something to harvest. I wonder how good that idea is though for rainfed agriculture in a place like Kenya that traditionally has two rainy seasons each year and in many places the rest of the year is quite dry. Fortunately this particular area is blessed with more rainfall and with a river to provide irrigation water - although a farmer wishing to irrigate has to carry the water from the river by hand unless he or she has an electric pump.

Most Kenyan farmers who lack irrigation plant twice a year, once during the 'short rains' in November and once during the 'long rains' in March. However, the rainy seasons have become less dependable with the onset of the climate crisis. Assuming the rains don't fail and a farmer gets a crop, then they eat what they harvest each season and now - at the end of the dry season - their diets get rather monotonous, full of whatever stores well, like maize, beans, and cabbage. But on irrigated biointensive farms, everything is growing all the time. The exception are the few crops like maize and beans that store well. Those are still planted during the rains from what I observed.


Sugarcane, I think. Sugarcane is a popular treat in Kenya. It's sold by street vendors who peel it with a panga (machete) and cut it into chunks.


The compost pile


Flowers, being grown under a cover to protect them from the sun.


The flowers are being grown under here.


A better look at the plant nursery.




Tree tomatoes, I think

Tree tomato (Cyphomandra betacea) is a native Andean crop and I was shocked to find out that it's a popular fruit in Kenya. In Nairobi, you can get tree tomato juice in some restaurants.

We then trekked back up the hill to the house to see the cows. Waithera used to have a dairy cow but it was stolen. She now has two bulls - a mature one and a calf. She opted for bulls instead of a dairy cow because she didn't want her animals to be as tempting to thieves. She sells her bulls when she needs money. She can sell them at any point after they are 1 year old.


Cow

She chooses to get "grade" (specific breeds typically brought in from foreign countries because of their fast growth or high milk production) cows instead of the local breeds, and says she's kept grade cows for years. I asked which breed these were (Angus?) and someone with us suggested they might be Holstein. They absolutely are not Holstein (black and white spotted dairy cows). She said the difference between 'grade' cows and local breeds is that the grade cows will grow to full size in three years instead of four.


Waithera near the cow enclosure.

Waithera does what Kenyans call 'zero grazing.' That just means keeping your animal confined and bringing the food to it instead of letting it out on pasture. It's a relatively new concept in Kenya. Waithera doesn't have enough land to let her cows out to graze much, so if she's going to have a cow, this is the only real option for her. Also, although Waithera didn't say, grade animals often must be kept confined for other reasons: they are very susceptible to local diseases (unlike the local breeds) and they need more food and water and wouldn't get enough calories if they went out grazing on local vegetation. I think the issue of getting enough calories is particularly true of dairy cows because producing milk takes a lot of calories. Grade animals are given 'supplements' - high calorie food that I think typically includes molasses.


Waithera and Francis Kimotho's home

We finished up at the Kimotho's home and then set off for Simon's farm.