When Elijah Murithi grew bananas within the Eighties and Nineties, central Kenya’s more and more erratic climate meant the farmer may not often make a gradual earnings from the thirsty crop.
Extended dry spells killed Murithi’s younger crops, and lengthy, intense wet intervals produced a glut of bananas that pressured him to decrease his costs to promote them.
Even when he shifted to espresso, which wants much less water, the farmer nonetheless struggled to provide dependable yields.
However that modified in 2021 when he added an uncommon crop to his farm: fish.
A fishpond stuffed with greater than 1,500 tilapia now permits him to reap rainwater throughout heavy rains and use a few of it to irrigate his crops when dry spells hit, Murithi mentioned.
Now he makes an honest residing by means of drought or downpours, rising espresso and greens year-round whereas making additional earnings promoting fish.
“This really worked to my advantage,” he mentioned of his 10-by-25-metre (33-by-82-foot) fishpond, constructed simply uphill from the espresso crops on his 1.25-acre (0.5-hectare) farm in Kibingo, about 130km (80 miles) northeast of Nairobi.
Since he began fish farming in April, Murithi mentioned his espresso harvests have greater than doubled to 2,000kg (4,400 kilos) a yr and his total earnings has tripled.
Because the East African nation grapples with local weather swings that batter crops and choke incomes, together with a present drought that’s the worst in 4 a long time, some farmers are discovering that including fish to their farms might help with water storage, make their diets extra nutritious and increase earnings.
Since 2019, the Kirinyaga county authorities has been serving to farmers construct fishponds beneath an financial stimulus programme.
The county covers the price of a pond liner and, for the primary yr, pays for child fish, additionally referred to as fingerlings, and sufficient feed to maintain them till they mature.
The fisheries division mentioned it has to date supported about 20 farming teams and greater than 1,350 individuals.
Kirinyaga’s authorities mentioned in October it was working to extend annual fish manufacturing from 29 tonnes, which has a worth of 12.8 million Kenyan shillings ($104,000), to 62 tonnes. It didn’t present any details about the price of the initiative.
Altering attitudes
At first, most farmers resisted the thought of elevating fish in an typically parched area, mentioned Harrison Mwangi, chairperson of the Kamwaka Self Assist farmers group, which has 26 members.
He mentioned the prospect was alien to most of the members, who thought they’d have higher outcomes elevating chickens.
However after county officers supplied coaching on learn how to increase fish and mentioned they’d assist with the prices, many farmers have given it a attempt.
Finally, Mwangi mentioned, his group determined to transform a discipline of napier grass at a farm owned by considered one of its members – a discipline that was producing much less and fewer fodder, particularly in the course of the dry season – right into a fishpond firstly of 2021.
By the remainder of yr, the farmers then offered 17,000 shillings ($137) of fish to individuals visiting the farm or at native markets, Mwangi mentioned, describing the gross sales as “quite encouraging” for a primary harvest.
“The group could not have found a better way to utilise the farm,” he mentioned, explaining how farming fish was simpler than managing different livestock.
The Kamwaka farmers, who every have an annual earnings of 100,000 to 150,000 shillings ($807 to $1,211), ought to see even increased earnings from fish farming sooner or later as their shares multiply, Mwangi mentioned.
John Wilson – the supervisor of Mwea Aquaculture Farm, which raises tilapia and catfish and in addition affords coaching to farmers – mentioned fish farming just isn’t solely good enterprise but in addition gives another supply of protein for Kenyans.
A fish surplus
Other than the problem of persuading drought-hit farmers in Kenya that fish is a practical crop, the venture nonetheless has a couple of different kinks to work out, Murithi and Mwangi mentioned.
Whereas the ponds is usually a buffer in opposition to drought by storing rain for use for irrigation within the dry season, farmers hit with notably prolonged dry spells can wrestle to search out methods to high them up.
Murithi mentioned he has at instances replenished his pond utilizing agricultural water rations supplied by the county to assist farmers throughout dry intervals.
Kamwaka farmers additionally need to pump clear water from close by rivers to their ponds on a weekly foundation when there isn’t any rain. They use a generator, which is dear to run, Mwangi mentioned.
One other problem is learn how to take care of a surplus of fish now filling native markets as extra individuals take up elevating them, in accordance with trade insiders.
“Farmers need to be aggressive in looking for a market for their produce and should not wait for the county government to do the marketing for them,” mentioned Michael Manyeki, a fingerling producer in Sagana, a small industrial city in Kirinyaga.
For Ntiba Micheni, a professor of marine and fisheries biology at Nairobi College, the answer to extra manufacturing is getting extra Kenyans to consider fish as dinner in a rustic the place consuming them just isn’t frequent in all places.
“If there is no robust ‘Eat More Fish’ campaign for young children, for schools and for communities, [selling] fish will forever remain a challenge,” mentioned Micheni, a former official on the authorities’s fisheries division.
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