School breeds future agro-experts - Daily Nation

A potholed murram road with huge trenches on the sides leads us to Karima Girls High School in Kinangop, Nyandarua County.

Deputy principal Gladys Lang’at ushers us into the school, just as students are finishing their lunch. Our first stop is at a section where Form Four students are checking on their flourishing cabbages that weigh 4 to 7kg each.

Here, we meet school agriculture champions, Yvonne Wamuyu Gichungu and Cralicia Nyaguthii.

“My love for agriculture has come from my interaction with farming activities at Karima Girls. Agriculture is now my career of choice and I would want to be a veterinarian,” says Yvonne, praising her teacher Maina Karuga for helping her develop interest in the subject.

From their giant cabbages, grown exclusively by the students, one acknowledges that the learners are mastering their craft.

“We have ended up with good harvest but it was not easy. We had a problem with rains forcing us to manually water the plants. We also had a challenge with aphids but we were taught how to control them," says the candidate. Like Yvonne, Cralicia also hopes to take an agriculture-related course in futur —– in particular agriculture economics.

“For the demonstration plots, we started with clearing land, then cultivated the first time and second in February before planting in March,” says Cralicia. According to the students, they each dug 30 holes on a 4 by 3m plot, where they planted the crop in 60 by 60 feet spacing.

“I applied a handful of farmyard manure which I had prepared during the second cultivation and a spoonful of fertiliser per hole before planting. One lesson I have learnt is that agriculture requires perseverance,” says Cralicia.

Karuga says spending time on the farm has made more students take agriculture and has improved the mean grade to 11.5 in 2018 from an average of 5 years back. This year, 168 students have selected the subject from 110 in 2018. Away from the student’s gardens, the school’s six acres where they farm also hosts potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbages, sukuma wiki (collard greens) and spinach. They also grow maize for silage-making.

At the livestock section, the school has 20 dairy cows and currently, only four are lactating, producing 80kg of milk a day.

“We consume all that we produce from the farm and only buy when the crops are off season. Part of savings made goes to supporting the less fortunate students from the 1,700 that we have,” says principal Grace Wanjiru, noting they buy two animals per week from the savings they make from the crop farm.

According to Wanjiru, the farming activities save them up to Sh3 million annually.

Wanjiru says the farm has five permanent employees, with between 10 and 20 casuals depending on the season.

Muchai Maina, the director Ol Joro Orok Agricultural Training Centre encourages schools to engage in farming activities to complement fees paid by the parents.

“Vegetables are easy to grow and I don’t see why any school with a garden should be buying them. But as they farm, schools should consider taking their farm managers and teachers in-charge of the farms on refresher or short course,” said Mr Maina.