Agriculture
Residents of Lugari Sub County in Kakamega County have been encouraged to embrace sunflower farming to boost government’s plans to promote locally produced edible oil and cut on imports. Lugari Deputy County Commissioner Simon Mutai and Chekalini Ward Agriculture Officer Linet Kiyari made the rallying call at Koromait in Chekalini location during a public baraza.
They noted that sunflower farming has numerous potential benefits for the community besides improving the local economy and providing a cheap sustainable source of cooking oil for households in the area. Mutai said the government in collaboration with selected county governments is implementing a five-year Edible Oil Crops Promotion Project through the Agriculture and Food Authority to enhance domestic production.
He said it is ironic for the government to continue importing edible oil from other countries yet we are blessed with fertile soils and favourable weather conditions.
He said: “We are appealing to farmers in the three selected wards of Chekalini, Lumakanda and Mautuma in Lugari Sub County to seize the opportunity and grow sunflower. We are lucky to be among the three sub counties enlisted for the project in Kakamega County.
“Initially farmers abandoned sunflower growing due to market challenges but now the government has tasked the Agriculture and Food Authority to do the marketing. “Let farmers take advantage of the program and diversify their farming activities as the crop only takes about three months to be ready.”
Chekalini Ward Agriculture Officer Linet Kiyari speaks at Koromait in Chekalini location during a public baraza.
Mutai disclosed that a large percentage of registered farmers in the three wards have already received freed seeds from Kenya Seed Company which was tasked by the government to distribute the right seeds. Kiyari on her part told residents that they will have themselves to blame if they will not have benefitted from the program when the five years’ elapse.
She said the government is investing heavily on sunflower growing upon realization that it is spending a lot on edible oil imports. “The government has been spending a lot on importation hence the need to sensitize and encourage farmers to revert to sunflower and other edible crops farming.
Apart from sunflower we shall also grow soya beans. Those are the two edible oil crops the county government is promoting within Kakamega County.”Kiyari explained. She disclosed that during the registration of farmers willing to engage in sunflower farming, most village elders claimed that residents initially abandoned the crop, due to challenges posed by birds, a claim she dismissed saying pricing was the biggest problem.
She said: “The major challenge was on marketing. Birds are only a challenge for two to three weeks. However, the marketing challenge is being worked upon as the county government is negotiating prices with potential buyers. “Besides capacity building farmers, the county government also has plans to acquire oil extraction machines which will be stationed closer to farmers. With the machines easily accessible the farmer will be at liberty to either sell the oil or use it.”
The Agriculture and Food Authority will be implementing an edible oil crops promotion project which seeks to support availability of affordable and quality inputs, technical support on production, as well as promoting cottage level processing. Sunflower, which is widely adapted to almost all ecological zones in the country, is one of the crops singled out as a viable alternative towards achieving self-sufficiency and import substitution.
The proposed project will contribute towards creation of employment opportunities in a number of areas including seed distribution, production, produce aggregation, transportation, warehousing, aggregation and agro-processing.
Within the next 5 years, interventions through the project are anticipated to increase domestically produced edible oil from the current 80,000 metric tonnes to 240,000 metric tonnes. This will lead to a production of 1.5 million metric tonnes of soya bean, canola and Sunflower seed for use as raw material in oil extraction.