OPEN FORUM ORGANIC RESOURCE

It is time for agripreneurship.It is only recently that subsistence farmers took to building green houses. Why did it take so long to transfer the green house technology from flowers to food that we eat daily?In Thika, the irrigation principles used by Del Monte are yet to cross the superhighway to the peasant farmers. No maize or beans are grown in the scale flowers and pineapples are grown.Follow suitNeedless to say, university students majoring in agriculture are not held in very high esteem.If hunger is to be defeated and drought subdued, we must modernise agriculture by relying less on weather, Del Monte and flower farms in Naivasha have shown the way; we just need to follow suite with food crops.Kenya Agricultural Research Institute must take her science and technology to grassroots so that the small scale farmers can apply science in improving agriculture. It is amazing that we take our children to school to study science but we still can't feed ourdelves as a Nation!We must forget rain; Kenyans should forget fishing only in natural lakes and move to Aquaculture by raising fish in their farms.At DOOR International Africa[DOOR stands for Deaf Opportunity Outreach], we are training the deaf to practice Organic Farming to provide healthy food for themselves and communities where they come from. It is also a way to earn livelihood for such group of the population that has very special needs and intergrate them with the rest of the the populace in engaging in economic activities. Kenyans should pay a visit to California whose agricultural sector is probably bigger than Silicon Valley Software and Hollywood. The ingenuity in taming nature in California is unbelievable with water pumped from the well watered North to the arid south. More water is pumped from Colorado River to the east, a distance equivalent to Mombasa –Kisumu!Drought and floods will always come but to deal with them we must leverage on our ingenuity and creativity.We seem to talk of entrepreneurship everywhere but not in agriculture. There is even a self–serving belief that running away from farms, agriculture is itself entrepreneurial.Yet, the reality on the ground today seems to indicate that the golden age of the farmer, the agripreneur is about to begin, driven by burgeoning population, changing climate and soon profits. Other sectors had their time; they should cheer the farmers, the agripreneur up.Hunger and drought should not be a staple in a democratic country that boasts of a new Constitution and Vision 2030. If the visible hand of the government cannot resolve drought and hunger issues, we should let loose the invisible hand of the market. After all, Kenya’s very vibrant flower sector is driven by the market, with no Kenya flower board, to quote Harvard don, Michael Porter.—
[Proposed B.A.M NEWSLETTER by Bernard Wainaina]
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