Posted on October, 17, 2023 at 09:34 am
Millet and Sorghum farmers in Eastern part of the country now want the government to facilitate the provision of mechanized tools to ease the harvesting of their produce to reduce losses.
They expressed optimism that the of harvesting the indigenous grains will not only on cost of post-harvest losses but attract youthful farmers who were discouraged to venture in the production system.
The farmers made the appael during celebrations marking the “World Food Day 2023” at the KALRO Kiboko Research Centre in Makueni County arguing that the cereal crops were doing very well with minimal rainfall but production remained low because majority of farmers did not embraced the crops because of the harvesting challenges.
They said as the country joined the World in commemorating the event under the theme, “Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind” it was time such interventions were applied to promote food security areas with below average rainfall where at least 60 percent of farmers were young people who could be wooed by modern farming techniques.
“Various traditional methods of processing are still widely used, particularly in these parts of the semi-arid tropics where sorghum and millets are grown but the techniques are laborious, monotonous and literary manual” a farmer told the Kenya News agency (KNA)
Samuel Nzongolo an aging farmer from, kibwezi East who has been growing millet ,sorghum and green grams says there was ready market for the indigenous cereals but was worried whether youthful farmers would take up from them when they are long gone since it was labour intensive which many of them avoided.
Source: Kenya News Agency