Laikipia bets on technology to upscale food production

Laikipia county government has started a programme aimed at upscaling conservation agriculture and the use of technology to boost food production.

The programme being implemented in partnership with Farm Africa and Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, will see farmers trained on the best farming practices to enhance food security.

Initiative targets over 40,000 farmers and will facilitate the establishment of a farmers’ training centre.

In the centre, farmers will access training on the available technologies in the various agricultural subsectors.

This will enable them to engage in agribusiness to boost their livelihoods.

“Farmers will access the latest technologies in areas such as incubators for poultry and even access quality chicks and this will be across the board,” Governor Joshua Irungu said.

Further, they will be trained on conservation agriculture that promotes minimum tillage to maximise their farms’ productivity in the wake of climate change.

“It has been proven that farmers who use conservation agriculture do much better than those practicing conventional farming. This can help our farmers harvest more bags of maize especially if they use certified seeds,” he added.

The governor said farmers will be consolidated into co-operatives through which they will be trained and provided with subsidised inputs through the local cereals board.

The co-operatives will also be supported to source for markets for their produce that will be collected through aggregation centres, while being trained to properly dry their maize to reduce post-harvest losses.

“Our extension officers have already been trained on all these things and will be the ones training farmers,” the governor added.

The centre, he pointed out, will come in handy in exposing farmers to the latest agricultural technologies that they mostly have to wait for agricultural shows to access.

Irungu said adopting technology will enable farmers to practice sustainable agriculture and make them resilient against erratic weather patterns.

“We will be fronting these technologies to make agriculture more appealing to youths because many of them think agriculture is too manual and are discouraged from it.”

“The adoption of these technologies will enhance production of the value chains in cereals and African vegetables and encourage the participation of the youths along the value chains,” he said.