Lest you din't know; stress significantly affects decision making

If an important decision looms but your mind is consumed with the fear that you’ve lost your wallet, better save decision making for later. Multiple studies show that stress significantly affects decision making.

Tweet to @Hwereh

Peru Passes Monumental Ten Year Ban on Genetically Engineered Foods

Peru Passes Monumental Ten Year Ban on Genetically Engineered Foods

Tweet to @Hwereh

Rural youth ditch farming for lucrative bodaboda business

Year in, year out, at the onset of every rainy season, Mr James Wanje, a Busia district resident, used to prepare his land for planting. With the help of family labour, the 34-year-old would plough their two-and-a-half-acre piece of land and thereafter sow various food crops.

“I planted maize on about one-and-a-half-acres of the land and other crops on the remaining piece. I used most of the harvest for my subsistence and would later sell some,” Mr Wanje recounted last week.

However, times have changed. Today, as rain clouds gather for another season, Mr Wanje cares less about tilling his farm or planting. He is busy all day long ferrying customers to various destinations using his bodaboda.

His drastic change of livelihood is mirrored by hundreds of young men in rural Kenya who have swapped farming for motorbike business.

The bodaboda industry is fast growing and is believed to be lucrative. It has attracted many young men all over the country, many of whom were engaging in agriculture.

Unfortunately, this has caused a worrisome trend, especially in rural areas, as it is the elderly who now till the land to feed their folk.

This pattern has raised the eyebrows of agricultural experts, who believe that motorbikes harbour a potential threat to food production in Kenya.
Like in other African countries, agriculture is the nerve centre of Kenya’s economy.

Currently, the country relies heavily on food imports from its neighbours in East and Southern Africa. Economic analysts blame sky-high prices of food for last year’s decline in value of the shilling against world currencies, where the local unit sunk to a historic low of 107 to the dollar in October.

A ministry of Agriculture report in January shows that Kenya intends to import over 600,000 bags of maize by June.

“Many youths are no longer interested in farming because there are readily available jobs and quick money in bodaboda business,” said Mr Mark Naimo, an agricultural extension officer in Western Kenya.

First, many youths are selling land inherited from their parents to buy motorbikes. And, second, others have shunned agriculture to seek jobs in the transport industry.

“Since most youths cannot afford about $1,050 (Sh87,360), which is the average price of a motorbike, they turn to land, the only resource available to them, and readily dispose it to buy the two-wheelers,” Mr Naimo said.

He noted that land sizes in most parts of rural Kenya are shrinking fast because of subdivisions. “I sold an acre of my land at $3,700 (Sh307,840) and used part of the money to buy two motorbikes at $1,070 (Sh89,000) each. I have employed someone to run one as I ferry people with the other,” said Mr Wanje. He now has just one-and-a-half-acre piece of land.

Mr Naimo says many youths lack patience — a virtue that agriculture demands. Erratic weather patterns have also weighed in, pushing young people to alternative sources of income.

Tweet to @Hwereh

Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA)

I thought you might be interested.......................

Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) is a program to provide free or low cost access to major scientific journals in agriculture and related biological, environmental and social sciences to public institutions in developing countries. Launched in October 2003, AGORA will provide access to 1900 journals from the world's leading academic publishers.

Led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the goal of AGORA is to improve the quality and effectiveness of agricultural research, education and training in low-income countries, and in turn, to improve food security. Through AGORA, researchers, policy-makers, educators, students, technical workers and extension specialists have access to high-quality, relevant and timely agricultural information via the Internet.

Tweet to @Hwereh

Women | Farming First

Tweet to @Hwereh

Sharing of information by farmers made easier:Google!

Tweet to @Hwereh

Paul Kagame; If all were like you.............

I have said this many times and am not gonna stop; for agriculture to be more sustainable, environmental friendly and attractive to the youth there is need for change in the way we perceive it and support from all corners given its multifaceted nature.President Paul Kagame of Rwanda understands this too well and other leaders should emulate him. Can you imagine where Africa would be with several other leaders like him? He is rallying support for smallholder farmers.   

Tweet to @Hwereh

Thought you'd like this! Analysis: Land grab or development opportunity?:

With land central to the livelihoods of millions of people in Africa, Lorenzo Cotula of the International Institute for Environment and Development examines the impact of large-scale land acquisitions on the continent's farmers.

"Land grabs" are now one of the biggest issues in Africa.

Over the past few years, companies and foreign governments have been leasing large areas of land in some of Africa's poorest countries.

BBC News - Analysis: Land grab or development opportunity?:

Lest you did not know......

................you can enhance seed security through the FAO's crop calender. The Crop Calendar is a tool that provides timely information about seeds to promote local crop production. It contains information on planting, sowing and harvesting periods of locally adapted crops in specific agro-ecological zones. It also provides information on the sowing rates of seed and planting material and the main agricultural practices.

This tool supports farmers and agriculture extentionists across the world in taking appropriate decisions on crops and their sowing period, respecting the agro-ecological dimension. It also provides a solid base for emergency planning of the rehabilitation of farming systems after disasters.

The Crop Calendar provides information for more that 130 crops, located in 283 agro-ecological zones of 44 countries.

Tweet to @Hwereh

Farmer squeezes Sh2.4m a year from mango trees

Mangoes on the market

As a proponent of the idea that youths need to be involved in agriculture and take it as a form of employment I go great lengths in looking for ways to justify and convince them. One way of doing this is by sharing success stories on how farmers have made it in different agricultural practices and to this effect, I do a lot of reading and research to bring such stories to my readers.
Today, am going to share with you on how Mr Francis Kiplaga has made it from Mango tree farming - a farming venture that one won't even imagine of when planning for his/her farming. This story was featured in one of the Kenyan dailies and it can be accessed here.

 Tweet to @Hwereh

An illustrative 11 minutes from Tanzania to show the multiple benefits of agroforestry

Tweet to @Hwereh

Engaging African youths in agricultural development

 WorldStage Newsonline-- Despite the huge population of unemployed youths within the continent, most African countries are finding it difficult to engage them in agricultural practice which poses a lot of challenge to food production for the citizenry. KAYODE ABOYEJI writes below................
click here to read the whole article

Tweet to @Hwereh

Agricultural biodiversity can contribute to food security and livelihood security

Environmental conservation is never conservation minus enhancement of Biodiversity. This basically refers to the richness of life and it can be looked at different levels – genetic, species, niche, habitat all the way to the ecosystem level.

As young farmers we can as well contribute to this by enhancing Agricultural diversity in our agro systems. In this case we consider Agricultural biodiversity as a sub-set of general biodiversity and look at all forms of life directly relevant to agriculture: rare seed varieties and animal breeds (farm biodiversity), and also many other organisms such as soil fauna, weeds, pests, predators, and all of the native plants and animals (wild biodiversity) existing on and flowing through the farm.

Together, these varieties represent high levels of genetic diversity and are therefore the focus of most crop genetic resources conservation efforts. Agricultural biodiversity is the basis of our agricultural food chain, developed and safeguarded by farmers, livestock breeders, forest workers, fishermen and indigenous peoples throughout the world. The use of agricultural biodiversity (as opposed to non diverse production methods) can contribute to food security and livelihood security.

Tweet to @Hwereh

Embracing technology can make a difference but.....

As listened to this presidential aspirant and marvel at his mastery of the languages and all the things he's going to do for the Kenyan youth (Who he said the old forks have conspired to lock out of the job market) and the ailing agricultural economy if elected, one thing got my attention.

He categorically reiterated that we are not going to rejuvenate the agricultural economy by clinging onto the traditional farming methods and equipments. We need to embrace the use of technology and mechanization of the same in order move ahead. As a sign of walking the talk, this particular aspirant has a mobile phone as his party's symbol and goes ahead to argue that is by embracing such technologies that we are going to develop our country. 

Drawing the Contrast

I think this one has my vote, kindly let me know what you think by leaving a comment on this post.. 

Tweet to @Hwereh

Attracting Youth to Agriculture

As we talk and talk about getting more youth involved in agriculture, there is need for concerted efforts from the training institutions to come up with attractive training packages to lure the youth. A strong commitment to youth development as a priority area by Colleges of Agriculture would be a significant step toward redirecting needed attention and commitment of resources required to meet significant goals of the colleges and the agricultural industry.

Tweet to @Hwereh

Promoting Local Innovations - Key to success

 
PROLINNOVA South Africa: Sparks on the Rainbow from CTA on Vimeo.

Tweet to @Hwereh

Huge potential in agricultural productivity but ...........

Post-harvest management and food processing key to food security and have in the recent past increasingly gained prominence in the wake of food insecurity prevalent which is largely attributed to their absence. In agriculture, postharvest handling is the stage of crop production immediately following harvest, including cooling, cleaning, sorting and packing. The instant a crop is removed from the ground, or separated from its parent plant, it begins to deteriorate. Post-harvest treatment largely determines final quality, whether a crop is sold for fresh consumption, or used as an ingredient in a processed food product. Effective handling decreases postharvest losses and thus enhancing food security. This link will lead you to a whole lot of opportunities / publications in this regard .

The CTA Catalogue

Tweet to @Hwereh

Why Agriculture is important and worth pursuing as a career

Agriculture is important for many reasons, the most important of which is that we all need to eat and agriculture is the source of all food. Any country’s leader worth his salt should make feeding his people his priority number one just as it is paramount for any family’s head. Not only does the practice of agriculture allow us to find quicker and faster ways to grow food but also is a source of employment.
Why not pursue a career in agriculture? A glimpse at this will give you an idea on how important agriculture is and why a career in it is worthwhile. Click here.

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?screen_name=Hwereh

Embracing irrigation for enhanced food security in Turkana

An irrigation system for food production

Irrigation is the application of water to farmland by means other than rainfall. It is usually required for growing crops in regions that receive less than 10 inches of precipitation per year and highly advisable in regions that receive only slightly more precipitation or have long dry seasons or droughts during the growing season. More than half of all the farmers in the world practice some form of irrigation.
Through this technology, it is possible for the people of Turkana to be self-reliant by producing their own food if the state as well as non-state actors changed tact and embraced it.
 The food situation in Turkana is ‘grave’ - people are dying of hunger and as much as humanitarian aid is important in saving them, let us think of allocating a portion of the millions we perennially sink into emergency relief to irrigate Turkana for enhanced food security. This could be advanced through the young people who have energy for cattle rustling. The youth can be engaged in meaningful agricultural projects to feed their communities as well as the country.
 The Turkana have been dependent on relief food for the last five decades and “nothing seems to change”. The situation even seems to be worsening every year as the drought cycles become more recurrent and severe owing to climate change.
It is regrettable that irrigation has not been fully exploited and that some schemes that started were allowed to collapse. It is also unfortunate that during the rainy season, volumes of surface water are not harvested for irrigation but left to flow to waste. Israel, which is drier than Turkana, is food sufficient and feeds the world because food security is central to its development agenda. We can do better given our natural resource base endowment.

 Tweet to @Hwereh

Reaping big from farming butterflies

"Whenever I meet people and tell them that I am a butterfly farmer, they look at me with a sense of disbelief. They ask me: what does a butterfly farmer do, and what does it involve? Do you want to tell us that you grow butterflies?" These are the words from the host's mouth Clivon Mwachola a butterfly farmer in relation to people's bewilderment over his agricultural venture.
This 26 year old young man is a true example that as young farmers we can succeed by thinking out of the ordinary maize/beans farming. The full article can be accessed below. 
The Standard | Reaping big from farming butterflies

Tweet to @Hwereh