Promotion of Agriculture http://www.humanityunitedagainstpoverty.org/index.php?view=article&...

Promotion of Agriculture

Adopting Sustainable, Contemporary & Environmentally Appropriate Pro-poor Farming Practices (pronounced
Asip’ef)

Introduction

Orphanhood, HIV/AIDS and cultural norms like gender discrimination harm agriculture leading to debilitating hunger and extreme
poverty. Families scratch out an existence that is brutally difficult, living on the edge of survival and often falling off the edge,
leaving them sick and unable to afford medical care. Poverty reduction is impossible without promoting of productive agricultural
life that can not only feed them but from which they can also draw an income. This is possible through a locally tailored,
community-led participatory rural Kenya 21st Century Green Revolution. With this reduction of hunger, several other MDG
objectives would be accomplished.

CULINKE refers to this highly replicable Kenyan Green Revolution "ASCEAPPF," an acronym for
Adopting Sustainable, Contemporary & Environmentally Appropriate Pro-poor Farming Practices. It has
borrowed principles from the MDGs 21st Century Green Revolution and will be environmentally sustainable
through thoughtful investment at the farm and village level, in soil health, water harvesting, improved water
sources and sanitation. It actually is a kind of a “Quick Win” that combines the provision of impoverished
farmers with affordable replenishments of soil nitrogen and other soil nutrients, and training village workers
in farming, providing community-level support to plant trees to provide soil nutrients, fuel wood, shade,
fodder, watershed protection, windbreak and timber
as outlined by the report to the UN Secretary–General by the Jeffrey
Sach’s UN Millennium Project. At this point is worth noting that almost
every successful development experience has been based on a Green
Revolution at an early stage.

CULINKE’s Project Area

CULINKE works in western Kenya where the climate hot and tropical
occasionally humid, rainfall is erratic and unpredictable. Main economic
activities here are fishing and little farming. In some areas we have
sugar-cane growing, but with heavy losses in this sector and
mismanagement the impact is all but negative. In another area-Ahero, the
government recently rejuvenated rice cultivation through irrigation results
are slow in coming. Families are large and as with other areas in Kenya
women bear the brunt of the difficult economic hardships- feeding and
caring for families. This area is home to Kenya’s highest number of
HIV/AIDS incidence and so naturally orphans, and has one of Kenya’s
poorest provinces, Nyanza province. Inherently therefore hunger compounded by poverty is the major cause
of child vulnerability.

Justification
There are very few industries here and so the population must rely on the little agriculture to feed
themselves and sell the very little remaining “surplus” to earn an income. But with the high incidence of
HIV/AIDS, productive labour force has been depleted worsening the already deplorable agricultural
productivity. The resultant negative impact with it’s multiplier effect lands on:-
1. Children who end up in the streets;
2. On the industries who lose the productive labour force;
3. On women who take care of the families;
4. Even worse on grandparents who must now play parenting roles yet with no strength of even little

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farming.
Once on the streets some children are forced into prostitution, severe depression-alcohol/drug abuse, crime,
violent behaviour, child labour-difficult child labour leads to transactional sex and teenage pregnancies and
eventually leads to vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

With an integrated approach of HIV/AIDS awareness including a comprehensive component on

reproductive health education and services, women’s empowerment or gender equality and the initialisation
of a community-driven participatory green revolution we can make a rapid difference in just three years. As
clearly indicated in the Millennium Project report to UN secretary General in the book “Investing in
Development” there already are proven methods and strategies to achieve rapid results and put countries on
track to achieving the MGDs.

One is about a massive effort to build expertise at the community level;

Two is the technical support but in this instance to committed NGOs and;
Three to remain in a constant state of consultation and openness with all technical agencies locally and
internationally, governmental e.g. Agricultural Extension Officers and NGOs.

Only then can the slow diffusion of latest and other older, proven traditional agricultural skills be
disseminated to the impoverished farmer at the grassroots level.

Challenges
The intervention methods CULINKE practices are already in use here and in other parts of the Third World
and including Kenya.

However the ten major challenges to their replication are:-

1. Slow diffusion or dissemination of the methods and technologies;
2. The technical support to reach the grassroots with the same, e.g. transport-poor roads, vehicles, seeds and
the high cost of fertilisers;
3. Far fewer indigenous agricultural-specific Non State Actors or Non Governmental Organisations;
4. Very little direct funds to the few Agricultural Non State Actors;
5. Ineffective government employed agricultural extension officers due to government bureaucracy,
motivation and poor infrastructure;
6. The prohibitive cost of well-researched hybrid or improved yields seed from government research
stations;
7. Too much boardroom and elitist conceptualisation of policies by agricultural bodies;
8. Harsh agro-climatic conditions and lack of an effective rural water and irrigation policy;
9. Need to mainstream agricultural development into the key instruments of development in relation to the
MDGs or in other words give agricultural development, water and sanitation the same seriousness as
HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness has been;
10. Total ignorance of and lack of perception by leaders at both grassroots and national level of the
interconnectedness between wealth creation, food security and nutrition to the Green Revolution.

Intervention Methods
• Promoting the planting of genetically engineered food for food security;
• community-owned poultry farming of either free range or grade birds;
• promoting cross-breeding of cattle for increased meat and higher milk
production;
• promoting environmentally acceptable natural manure as fertilizer;
• promoting the work of extension workers and services like initiating
community-owned cattle dips;

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• Initiating farmer schools for demon stations and marketing in strategic locations;
• Forming of farming marketing cooperatives to market the produce and lobby for better prices.

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