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Kenya: Rains Flood Farmers With Miseries as Crops Are Washed Away

Published

6 years ago

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When Mohamud Abdullahi visited a friend in Meru in 2017, he saw a business opportunity in growing bananas on his farm, which borders Daua, a seasonal river, in Mandera County.

“My aim was to plant bananas and sell them at the local market because most people were sourcing them from Somalia and Ethiopia,” said the farmer, who hails from Mandera East and owns 30 acres.

He chose to farm the crop under irrigation because he already had the infrastructure, including irrigation tunnels and machinery. He had previously been growing onions, watermelons, vegetables and capsicum.

“I bought 600 tissue culture banana seedlings at Sh100 each from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology,” he recounted.

For the past one year, his six-acre banana farm has been doing well, with more than 200 bunches ready for harvest.

But as fate would have it, the worst happened on May 9 when River Daua broke its banks, flooding farms. “I woke up that morning to find my farm flooded. It had not rained in Mandera but water was coming from Ethiopia.”

Abdullahi hired youths to harvest mature bunches of bananas from the flooded farm as water washed away the remaining plants.

“I have lost at least Sh1.2 million in the banana business and another Sh1.5 million on the onion farm, which was also destroyed,” he said. A bunch of bananas in Mandera goes for between Sh700 and Sh1,200, depending on the size.

Mandera County director of agriculture Bernard Ogutu said it will take most farmers up to four months to stabilise.

According to Ogutu, bananas, especially the ripening varieties, thrive well in areas that are 1,200m and 1,600m above sea level and need rainfall averaging 1,200mm, and with average temperatures of 250 degrees Celsius.

“Farmers in the county grow the crop under irrigation and the production has been good. We have been improving our supply volumes to the local market,” he said.

INCURRED HUGE LOSSES

He noted that the flooding in Mandera is perennial. “We are always on the receiving end whenever it rains in Ethiopia but this has been the worst since 2013,” he said.

At least 4,600 farmers have been affected along the river and crops and farm machinery worth Sh834 million destroyed, according to the county agriculture office.

Many miles away in Nakuru, Daniel Ndung’u, who grows seedlings, also suffered a similar fate when rains washed away his plants.