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Solving Kenya’s Food Crisis, One Indigenous Crop at a Time
In Kenya, persistent drought is threatening food security for some 31.5 million people, and more than one million face imminent starvation.
Kenya’s government, looking for about $525 million in supplemental food funds from an already inflation-impacted budget, faces the prospect of feeding its people at the expense of a number of other projects that could improve food security for the future.
It’s a perilous tradeoff — survival now at the expense of future survival.
At the same time, the Kenya Food Security Steering Group (KFSSG) reports that the 2009 maize crop will be 28 percent below normal. This is extraordinarily bad news because maize is the staple food crop for 96 percent of Kenya’s people.
And therein lies the problem, says Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, a horticultural scientist, teacher and researcher with Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology in Nairobi.
Abukutsa-Onyango, who has been following the crisis as part of her advocacy of African indigenous vegetables, says any long-term solution to global warming, drought and crop failure must be addressed by reducing dependence on Western-style agriculture in favor of indigenous crops.
The problem, Abukutsa-Onyango (in photo at right) notes, is one that has been developing for centuries as Western emphasis on mono-cropping introduced non-native foods (pineapple, cabbage, spinach, carrots, etc.) which required extensive irrigation and frequent applications of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
This non-sustainable form of agriculture, while producing revenues in the form of exportable food, is no longer a viable means of insuring Kenyan food security, given the fact that 80 percent of Kenya’s crops are grown in the arid lowlands, where rain is becoming increasingly unreliable.
As a result of crop Westernization, at least 200 indigenous crops once heavily cultivated in Africa – including such species as grain amaranth, cowpeas, jute mallow, Ethiopian kale, spider plant, African nightshade and pumpkin leaves – have been lost. Today, about 30 species remain, conserved at regional botanical gardens and national museums, as well as at the National Gene Bank in Kikuyu.
It has been Abukutsa-Onyango’s life work to isolate a handful of the most important of those indigenous vegetables and promote their cultivation at the most basic level – among the farmers of Kenya, many of whom are women.
Her efforts on behalf of indigenous crops and women have been surprisingly successful.
“Today, spider plant, African nightshade and vegetable amaranth can be found in Nairobi supermarkets and restaurants, after years of being spurned by the well-fed as food only for the poor, and by the poor themselves as alternatives only in times of extreme hunger,” she says.
The results have been decades in the making, as Abukutsa-Onyango first sought to identify the obstacles, and then created methods of overcoming them.
The outcome – a network of 100 contact farmers, or farmer’s groups, who are trained in all the technical and practical aspects of seed production, seed utilization, seed processing, sustainable indigenous crop production and organic farming methods – is the sort of grassroots outreach that has made indigenous seed more available and more viable, and provided a means of training others to grow these valuable, highly nourishing, food varieties.
“Most of my work on African indigenous vegetables has been participatory at all stages. First and foremost I had to identify and rank the indigenous vegetables grown by, and most familiar to, Kenyan farmers.”
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I am an apiculture farmer in
I am an apiculture farmer in Machakos. i find this very educative and think it is an important health and economic geared venture. i find it veery important to plant these veges for my bees since they seem to offer the bees best food for the fact that they flower all the time unlike the common food from the acacia trees which flower seasonally. I think there is a strong connection between the indegenous veges and the honey bees. I wish to welcome any willing persons and party to an apiary am setting at K.K Ranch which is adjacent to Makutano junction ( Mombasa - Machakos junction).
MAJORITY of the people living in this area don't know the vale of these veges. i would be glad to know both the botanical against the local names.
Since i want to produce organic honey i find it neccessary to go for these cropes since they are highly resistant to pests and diseases and require no fertilizers. Madam Marey has done me proud!
Indigenous vegatables
Thank you Proffesor because the topic is very encouraging to most of us who have that interest in indigenous vegetables. Being a resident of Juja, from from the experience I have, the climate is very poor, just to mention like for the last four years we have been having very low rainfalls that could not have sustained cultivation of crops such as maize or even beans I have been trying cowpeas vigna unguiculatta) and it has been responding very well. Amaranthus also has been doing very well. I have also noted that the cowpea plant can be harvested several time before its final senesence. Bravo Prof as we look forward for more encouragement and we do promise to desiminate this information to the local communities
Thanks to Prof. Abukutsa Mary
Gratitude to Prof. Abukutsa for her efforts in research on African Leafy Vegetables (ALVs). Really, the African environment has probably been the least explored in terms of available untapped resources. If not for Prof's efforts which have imparted a lot to the institutions, organizations and communities, the ALVs will be extinct and the result will be loss of this biodiversity and under utilization of these readily available resources. Then poverty and malnutrition problems.
Her efforts to identify the obstacles and then create methods of overcoming them has been evidenced by seed production, support systems for ALVs and collection, evaluation and multiplication of germplasm in Kenya.
We should therefore join hands with her to support and encourage the suffering humanity to explore the precious assets of ALVs and increase their rational exploitation in traditional medicine.
Thanks Prof. and be blessed.
Thanks Kenneth Odero. Your
Thanks Kenneth Odero. Your comments are very encouraging, but all of us have to join hands and solve Africa problems using home grown solutions using the competetive advantage the African continent has.Each one of us to play our apart in our own ways
Thanks again United we stand and divided we fall
Regards
Mary
Excellent piece on adaptaton
Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango's work on indigenous vegetables is commendable and very relevant to the climate risk Kenyans and other Africans face. At Climate XL we believe that indigenous people have continually taught the world small but powerful lessons; how to live in harmony with nature.
What they mimicked from nature (i.e., biomimicry, now considered cutting-edge area of science), they have given back to nature. But alas, visitors from far and beyond came and, in ignorance (but most of the time sheer arrogance) rebuked the indigenous people for not being 'scientific-minded', unsophisticted, or even unambitious and lazy!
The truth is that indigenous people invented science, biodiversity, sustainable management of resources, and all other good things we all want to be associated with today. The evidence is their historically minimal greenhouse gas emissions! The rest of us only systematized (or grave structure) to the science practiced by indigenous people for years. In return, we rewarded then with biopiracy.
It is therefore very refreshing to see humble scientists like Abukutsa-Onyango recognizing the importance of indigenous plants. And for doing the right thing, kudos Mary!
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