AGRICULTURE AND MODERN FARMING

Poultry farming in Kenya has evolved from traditional small scale chicken keeping to a fully commercialized industry. The growth I this sector has been catalyzed by increased consumption due to population growth and the white meat campaign from nutritionists. Increased land fragmentation has made farmers to resolve to ventures that have highest economic benefits per area and poultry farming one of them. In spite of the growing demand, interested chicken farmers are usually scared by the risks involved especially in the first month. The risk varies from layers, broilers and dual Purpose. Various types of poultry diseases can cause serious loss in the poultry farming business. Diseases occur due to lack of proper care and management, inadequate nutritious feeding and some other factors. Chicken diseases can be categories in three 1.       Contagious Diseases : They spread from affected bird to healthy ones ·    ...

Africa’s food sufficiency can only be achieved if stakeholder cooperates to come up with strong policies that focus on population growths, available resources, and workforce. If agricultural systems are small in natural, social and human assets,  then a  sudden switch to organic practices that rely on these assets will not be immediately successful and may take the time to reach its full potential. In developing nations, evidence from research shows that agricultural produce in organic systems remains stable when converting from systems that use relatively small amounts of synthetic inputs such as those frequently found in Africa. In the long run, yields increase as assets in systems improve, hence outperforming those in traditional systems and matching those in more conventional, input-intensive systems. Organic farming can lead to increased food production – in many cases, a doubling of yields has been seen – which makes a significant contribution to improving the f...

Since the millennium development goals were set in the early 90s, food insecurity has intensified in Kenya. The insecurity is not associated with war like most African countries, but sheer negligence and lack of proper strategy to curb famine and drought. Ironically, most of the people affected by food insecurity are the pastoralist communities and small-scale maize farmers in areas where they experience one farming season. These are the producers and if anything they should be the last to complain about the food. Laikipia which is one of the affected counties once held the pride of being a major producer of maize and animal product. In fact, Ng’arua division ranked somewhere near Trans Mara and Uasin Gishu. Mostly the farmers here have adopted early maturing maize varieties like Pioneer 30G19, Panna 3M and 520 however, the harvests have averaged ten bags per acre as a result of depreciating soil fertility. After harvesting in October and November, most farmers in Laikipia a...