Monday, March 17, 2014

First class in and out of varsity

By KITAVI MUTUA
More by this Author
When Eric Mumo graduated from university with a First Class honours degree in 2009, he got several exciting job offers, but he declined them all. Fresh from Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology, the statistics graduate opted for commercial farming and set up his base in the most unlikely of places — his arid village of Nzangathi in Kitui County.  He started with Sh150,000 of personal savings that has now grown into a thriving farm worth Sh16 million in assets and 12 full time employees.
In just five years, Mr Mumo has built up a steady enterprise which includes dairy, fish, poultry and horticultural units on his 15-acre land and won several innovation awards. At first, his peers and some family members feared that he was gambling with his future instead of seeking formal employment. They felt, and genuinely so, that his good academic papers and young age should not be channelled into risky and unpredictable ventures like farming but rather into the flashy corporate world. However, determined to pursue his ambition, and armed with passion for his dreams and a little capital, Mumo bought a Friesian dairy cow. “I bought the first dairy cow in 2009, and soon after I added two more. I started supplying fresh milk to local restaurants” he says. Each cow was producing on average 14 litres daily, which he sold at Sh60 per litre at the nearby shops, earning Sh2,520 daily.
With the steady income of Sh75,000 per month, Mr Mumo invested the profits in more cows. Today he has 28 cows. The breakthrough came when he decided to diversify into tomatoes and water melons.  “My decision to stop relying on rain-fed agriculture and to engage in drip irrigation was the turning point as this ensured I  was in business throughout the year.”
The 29-year-old went full blast when he sunk a borehole, which enabled him to put his father’s entire 15-acre farm on drip irrigation. “In the first season, I harvested hundreds of tonnes of water melon, which I sold in Nairobi, recovering the costs of my investment and bought an Isuzu pick-up truck,” he  recalls. With a kilo of water melon then going for Sh32, each trip to Nairobi was fetching on average Sh48,000, and he could make several in one week.  When the Saturday Nation sought Mumo for this interview, we found a delegation of 80 farmers from the Embu Anglican Church Diocese learning from his simple, but effective farming techniques.
The farmer has been recognised by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Ministry of Agriculture for his outstanding innovations in food security.  Last year, he was listed among the most innovative and promising young farmers in the country, besides being pre-qualified as a dependable supplier of fish fingerlings in the region. Mumo stands out because of his ability to integrate all the farming units, where they inter-depend on each other to reduce production costs.
Having recently diversified into commercial poultry and fish farming, all the units now depend on each other and nothing goes to waste. “We’ve established a poultry incubator which gives us 528 chicks every three weeks and 10 fish ponds each with a capacity to hold more than 3,000 fish but the demand for both is overwhelming,” he said. He explains that all the four units — dairy, horticulture, poultry and fish — support each other. “Poultry manure goes to fish ponds to support the algae fed on by fish, the enriched pond water is channelled into the horticulture farm together with recycled dairy manure while the waste vegetables are fed to the chickens in a fascinating cycle which saves production costs.” 
The farmer says Ukambani region can easily sustain itself if only enough water was made available to every home. Every week, he is kept on his toes by overwhelming orders to supply all sorts of produce including day-old chicks, tomatoes, fish, milk to the market. In a good month, proceeds from milk, poultry, fish, fruits and vegetables can fetch him Sh500,000 gross. He makes more when he sells in bulk. Mumo urges the youth to dirty their hands to make money. 
His farm has created 12 direct jobs, and many others indirectly. Mumo intends to turn his farm into a demonstration centre where farmers across the region can visit and learn from the simple ideas and replicate them in their homes.

Eric Mumo Phillip feeding fish at one of of his many ponds at his Nzangathi farm in Kitui County. PHOTO | KITAVI MUTUA  NATION MEDIA GROUP
IT HAS NOT BEEN EASY
Since Eric Mumo ventured into commercial farming, he has learned on the job the hard way and overcame odds. From seeking credit to finance his projects, to marketing his farm produce and managing workers, he faced challenges he never expected. Getting a bank loan to invest in farming was his worst nightmare because the interest rates are high and there is no grace period. “Banks are asking us to start repaying their loans in the first month, and yet there is no crop that can yield results in such short time.” This frustrates many farmers.
Mumo urges the government to establish a branch of the Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC) in every county to support farmers. The other challenge has been lack of skilled labour, which has forced him to invest heavily in training his workers. “Most people who seek jobs in farms are semi-illiterate. Such workers cannot manage a poultry house, or monitor the health of fish or dairy cows,” he explains, adding he incurred huge losses until he started training his workers.
The farmer explains that agriculture extension services are not sufficient. “Kenya can sustain a double digit economic growth if agriculture is made a compulsory subject up to Form Four to make the youth stop their obsession with white collar jobs.” Mumo has also learnt to invest in marketing and quality of his produce.
“I’m very keen on the quality of my products because I target mostly Nairobi and export market where consumers demand the best,” he says.

Source: Daily Nation, Saturday, March 15, 2014

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Innovative doctoral education for global food security

Prepare your career as an international scientific expert within the area of global food security by participating in Training for successful doctoral students

Makerere University and SLU invites all interested participants to apply  for the following:


Makerere campus

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Short Course on Restoration of Degraded Semi-arid Landscapes for PhD Students in East Africa

PVS0109 Restoration of degraded semi-arid landscapes – Livelihood, Livestock and Land use, 10.0 credits

Restorering av degraderad semi-arida landskap – levnadsvillkor, boskap och markanvändning


Time

1 Sep 2014 - 16 Jan 2015, 30%, Mixed
Cycle
Postgraduate
Subject
Agricultural Science
Application code
SLU-P0004
Location
Uppsala
Distance
No
Language
English

Application deadline:   16 May 2014

Syllabus approved: 2014-01-10 

Subject: Agricultural Science

Marking scale: Pass / Failed

The requirements for attaining different grades are described in the course assessment criteria which are contained in a supplement to the course syllabus. Current information on assessment criteria shall be made available at the start of the course. 

Prerequisites:
Accepted as a PhD student in SLU or East African countries.

Objective:
The course will provide understanding of multifunctionality and complexity of rangelands. The students should be able to relate gained knowledge to their own research topic, but also to other disciplines in a multidisciplinary context. The students should also get an insight and understanding in participatory methods and experience in use of some of the methods. In addition, through small project work, do multidisciplinary analysis and reflection.

After completing the course the student shall be able to:
  • describe pastoralism and multifunctionality of rangelands
  • describe grazing strategies and explain consequences of overstocking and overgrazing
  • discuss animal husbandry and animal production in relation to sustainable intensification
  • describe, discuss and analyze co-benefits and trade-offs between desired landscape functions of different restoration methods/techniques
  • describe the drivers of vegetation changes
  • explain carbon sequestration in rangelands under different management regimes
  • use participatory research methods in practice

Content
This is a multidisciplinary course and it is relevant for students in different disciplines such as animal science, soil science, agroforestry, ecology, agricultural economy, rural development, etc.

The course will start with a video meeting/seminar to be followed by literature studies by the students at their home university. Field work will be the core in the course and the students will work in smaller groups or pairs during most part of the course. A high degree of interaction will be achieved by regular discussion and reflection sessions and the students will also make presentations, of individual and group assignments. The field work will be done in a "real case" where restoration of degraded rangelands has been established at different times since mid-eighties and is still going on. This gives the student a unique possibility to learn processes and changes of rangelands restorations but also to relate to their own research topic in a bigger picture. The pair of students will work with both a farmer who has implemented restoration and a farmer who has not. This in turn could be a sort of extension where the farmer not implemented can see effects of restoration methods. The up-start of the field work will be carried out at JKUAT (Nairobi) with 2 days of lectures and the students will have a possibility to meet and discuss with researchers from ICRAF and ILRI. During these two days, the students will also do individual presentations of the literature read and how they relate it to their own research area. During the field work the students will visit and interview farmers and also collect some basic data as well as "transect walks". The outcomes of the field part will later be presented orally in an end seminar but also in a course report done in a scientific report as well as in a popular science way, e.g. magazine like.

Literature:
Required reading is assigned by the course organizers. Information about the course literature will be available at least four weeks before the course starts.

Examination:
The examination will be composed of several parts: Introductory presentation of own research in relation to literature. Participate in all activities and exercises. Presentations of assignments and field work both orally and in written form. Approval of scientific report completed within three weeks after the field work in December and a short report written in a popular scientific way.

Additional information
All costs for the course (teaching travel costs and accommodation) will be covered by the course for students from SLU, JKUAT and other universities in East Africa. Student from other Nordic universities can take the course if place is available on their own expenses.

The course will be linked to a new research platform involving SLU, ICRAF, ILRI and other universities in Sweden and Kenya; the Triple L Initiative (www.agri4d.se)

The course will be running from September 2014 to January 2015.

Responsible department: Animal Nutrition and Management, SLU; Dept. of Forest Ecology and Management, SLU; Dept of Botany at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya.

Location: Nairobi and West Pokot, Kenya

Responsible department
Department of Animal Nutrition and Management, SLU


Submit your application to the course leaders:

Ewa Wredle and Gert Nyberg

E-mail: Ewa.Wredle@slu.se; Gert.Nyberg@slu.se