Posted on July, 22, 2019 at 10:18 am
By REUBEN GITHINJI Corespondent, Embu - The Star
Embu county is facing hunger following total crop failure owing to poor rains and bad seeds planted by farmers, Agriculture executive Ann Nyaga has said.
Nyagah said the county received little rain during the last season.
She said the county government with other organizations is trying to reach out to the farmers to educate them on the right varieties of seeds to plant.
Nyaga said there are seeds which mature in at least three months, are drought resistant and give good yields.
“We have crop failure because we received poor rainfall. Owing to this occurrence we are putting efforts to reach out to the farmers whenever we think we can get them easily together with institutions in the agriculture department to ensure they know what they need to plant,” Nyaga said.
She spoke during a farmers’ field day organized jointly by the Kenya Plants Health Inspectorate Services (Kephis), Embu county government and certified seed distributors at Rwika in Mbeere South subcounty on Thursday.
Nyaga advised local farmers to start planting traditional crops like cassava to complement maize, saying that they can do well anywhere.
She said researchers have greatly improved traditional food crops to be high yielding and they can be used to alleviate hunger in future.
Kephis general manager quality assurance Semion Kibet said the agency assures high quality of agricultural inputs and produce in the country to prevent adverse impacts on the economy, environment and human health.
He said before Kephis came into existence fake seeds and seedlings in the market were about 40 per cent and now they have been able to reduce them to two or three per cent.
He asked farmers to ensure they buy seeds from registered dealers. They should check the labels on the packaging material, scratch them and send the appearing codes to 1393 to know whether the seeds have been inspected or not.
Famers who attended the function complained of pests infecting their crops for the last two years but said they had been assisted to eradicate them.
Source: The Star