The recurring and frequent droughts in arid and semi arid regions of Kenya is now forcing pastoralists to abandon livestock rearing and take on irrigation farming.
The Dololomide farm group in Sankuri, Garissa county that consist of 60 members are now engaging in sorghum and cow piece irrigation farming after losing all their livestock to drought.
The group chairman Hassan Mohamed said that the frequent and severe drought pushed them to engage in farming after realising that it was becoming almost impossible to recover their herds.
“We decided that instead of waiting for handouts from the government, we try our hand in irrigation farming and with the support of relevant agencies we are slowly by surely succeeding,” he said.
Garissa county National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) coordinator Abdinoor Dubow who took the press on a tour of the farm said that sorghum intoxication project is a partnership that involves NDMA, department of agriculture, irrigation and fisheries and the farming community.
Abdinoor said that the county is classified as food insecure because it receives 280mm of rain in the two seasons combined.
“This cannot support the generation of the preferred maize,” he said.
“As the lead agencies involved in food security we put our heads together and agreed that the only way we can engage the farmers was to urge them to venture into sorghum farming that is drought tolerant,” he added.
He regretted that Garissa County depends on famine relief food throughout the year.
“This project is to demonstrate to the farming community and other stakeholders that we need to move away from relief dependency syndrome to a food secure situations by adopting drought resistant crops like sorghum,” Noor noted.
The crop that is being used as a demonstration centre was planted 3 months ago on a one acre plot and is ready for harvesting .
The department of agriculture provides the technical services, logistics while NDMA coordinates the activities.
“The sorghum has dual benefit. Apart from providing food it will also give fodder for the livestock,” he said.
According to the county director of agriculture Jelle Ibrahim, the programme is a ‘resilience building project’.
“The objective of the project is to build the resilience of the farmers and provide market access and capacity build the small holder farmers,” he said.
