Mbaluku Eubui in a DMTA corn field.
MAKINDU, KENYA — Mbaluku Eubui, 50, is a farmer. But her crops no longer feed her family of eight. She owns one acre of land where she has long grown maize and sorghum, but in recent years the harvest yield is just not enough. Her small plot of land was the sole source their livelihoods, so these days, “acute hunger” is not new to her children she says.
“I cultivate maize and sorghum yet the yields are never enough for my family’s food needs to see us through until the following harvesting season,” she says.
Like many farmers in Kenya, Eubui depends on rain-fed agriculture. Typically, the onset of the rainy season between March and May marks the planting season for maize. But changes in the climate here have made both the rains and the droughts increasingly unpredictable. Eubui says she is at the mercy of the weather since she, and most small farmers here, lack irrigation equipment.
So, this year Eubui took a job as a laborer in order to ensure her ability to feed her family. She earns 180 shillings, $2 USD per day, but she says this job will keep her family going – in more ways than one.
Eubui now works at the Kiboko Research Station, a project of the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute, KARI. The station is conducting research on drought tolerant maize varieties in the eastern parts of Kenya, one of the areas hardest hits by recent droughts. The project aims to create new seed varieties of maize and wheat that can grow well in areas with low moisture.
“Even though this job consumes most of my time since I am always here all day, I need it to keep my family going,” Eubui says. But she says she is also excited about being on the frontlines of research and sustainability for food security in Eastern Africa. She says she looks forward to the day when her small piece of land will again sustain her family’s basic needs thanks to the research being done at KARI.
Dr. James Gethi, KARI plant breeder in charge of the Drought Tolerant Maize in Africa, DTMA, project at the station says he shares Eubui’s dream. “Research is something that takes time, but we hope to release the first batch of these seed varieties within the next two planting seasons,” he said during the farmers’ awareness workshop at the Kiboko Research Station last month.
An estimated 300 million Africans regard maize as their staple food item. Ugali, an East African dish made of maize flour and water, is a staple starch and one of the regions most common foods. While it is considered relatively low in nutrition value, it is filling and rich in energy.
But because maize is the primary food source for millions of Africans, Kenya’s food security is largely dependent on the availability and affordability of maize. Experts say climate change has been a major obstacle in the cultivation of maize over the last three years here. One major setback to the cultivation of the crop is recurrent droughts that have consistently hit the continent in recent years. According to the Kenya Food Security report, the recently predicted La Nina event, which will cause the Eastern Pacific to be much colder than usual and will disrupt rain patters, is likely to cause below-average rains over the next few months which is likely to have adverse effects on food security here in 2011.
But the fight for food security in Africa is nothing new. Families in pastoral Kenya have long suffered during droughts – though the rise in media coverage here has put a new face on the issue. One local television station in Nairobi aired a story last year about a nomadic family who feasted on their dog to keep from going hungry. Sensational media coverage aside, Kenya is experiencing its worst bout of food insecurity in more than 20 years, according to The Global Hunger Index report released by International Food Policy Research Institute, IFPRI, last month. Analysts at the IFPRI predicted, “grave danger in the food sector” if new solutions do not become available here soon.
Political Recovery and A New Solution
Since the post-election violence of 2007, Kenya has experienced a period of relative calm and political progress. The recovery effort in the food sector initially targeted farmers from agriculturally rich zones like the Rift Valley who were internally displaced after the disputed presidential elections. Today, however, large pieces of land that were once fertile and productive remain bare and dry.
But the team at KARI has motivated farmers, like Eubui, who live in some of the hardest hit regions. Local farmers say they are enthusiastic about the drought-tolerant maize varieties being developed by Dr. Gethi and his team.
According to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, CIMMYT, in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, IITA, adoption of projects like Gethi’s will provoke a significant drop in poverty levels here by 2016. According to CIMMYT, an organization that works in 13 African countries, Drought-Tolerant Maize in Africa, DTMA, will boost harvests by 10 to 34 percent in coming years.
The research station where Eubui now works to supplement her own meager earnings as a farmer in this arid area is one of CIMMYT’s only fully conditioned research stations. In collaboration with KARI, the group set up a research station to test and create drought tolerant maize varieties specific to eastern Kenya.
“The main reason is to produce more yields with less rains and fight food insecurity in the country,” says Gethi, who is developing the drought-tolerant seeds. The project was initially set up in 2007 but has grown in recent months to target more farmers in dry areas and train them to embrace DTMAs. “The idea is to turn large volumes of idle land into agriculturally productive areas to fight food insecurity which is in line with Millennium Development Goals and Vision 2030,” says Gethi.
Gethi says once the seeds have been tested, they plan to create a loan structure so that poor farmers who have struggled to fight off poverty during the recent dry years will be able to afford these seeds and have a fresh start. “We plan to loan out these seeds to farmers once they are tested and approved to aid those farmers who may not afford to buy them,” he says. The loan process will require farmers register before they take the seeds and will be required to pay the loan back after each harvest, keeping the remainder of their proceeds.
Gethi says he is hopeful that drought tolerant maize seeds will become the number one strategy in fighting food insecurity in Kenya and all of Africa. “If we can have as many countries as possible in Africa embrace this idea, then hunger and poverty will be a foregone case,” he says.
