Successful agriculture project in Kenya

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Agriculture in Kenya

Kenya: Bondo Farmers Turn Bare Land Into Green Paradise

10 FEBRUARY 2015

By Godfrey Ombogo

Bondo MP Gideon Ochanda has started a project to put idle land into productive use to feed the hungry population and help them make money.

As a pilot project, Ochanda has convinced about 90 landowners in Usigu division, East Yimbo ward, to give 230 acres.

And today, in the midst of the dry spell when most land in the always dry Bondo constituency lies fallow, the 230 acres blossom with green, healthy leaves of sukuma wiki, spinach, tomatoes, watermelon, green maize and Capsicum.

“An Aga Khan Foundation outfit has also tendered for passion fruit to be produced in about 100 acres,” Ochanda said.

In the project, the individual parcels of land are ploughed and irrigated as a block and the various crops planted.

This is unlike before when the landowners cultivated their own parcels individually with little resources and made little or no produce at all.

“These parcels are never productive because it is very difficult to mechanise farming as an individual and irrigation is expensive. So I convinced those who live around here on the need to come together,” Ochanda says.

The landowners now provide paid labour and also get shares from the production.

The MP identified a company, Value Farm Ltd, owned by a group of local professionals, to manage the project.

The company has invested Sh9 million and trains the farmers, provides entrepreneurial management, and markets and sells the produce.

Read the full article: allAfrica

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Originally published at desertification.wordpress.com on February 10, 2015.