As you approach Wote town in Makueni County, a scenic view unfolds along the Machakos-Wote road. Lush orchards of pixie tangerines stretch out on either side, their bountiful branches bowing under the weight of succulent citrus fruits.
It is the peak of the pixie harvesting season in the region, which is regarded as the country’s pixies belt. In 2019, Makueni farmers earned Sh595 million from pixies, the highest amount in all the 10 couties that grow the fruit, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture.
At the heart of Nthangu village, we find Jackson Nzioka watering his orchard. He is among dozens of smallholder farmers in the semi-arid area who have turned to irrigation to earn more from the fruits.
"We irrigate pixie tangerines at this stage to delay their ripening. This ensures that we hit the market in September when the demand is highest as the supply is at the lowest. This way our produce fetches premium prices in the market," he told the Health Nation team as he showed the irrigation system that leads to a hand-dug well in the middle of the sandy bed of River Kaiti, a seasonal river that passes through the village.
“A kilo of pixie tangerines fetches Sh100 on average around this time. The price will double in the next couple of weeks," he said. In addition, Mr Nzioka revealed, irrigating pixie tangerines guarantees two harvests per year. The off-season production is believed to be more profitable. The value addition is a big deal as he reveals that an acre yields between 10 and 15 tonnes of pixie tangerines per season.
Mr Nzioka learned the trick of using irrigation to increase the value of his produce by circumventing glut from his many interactions with big timers in the citrus and mangoes production in the area.
According to experts, irrigation is used to influence the fruition and ripening of some fruits. “Through irrigation, a fruit tree can shorten its recuperating period if it epigenetically senses that it has enough resources to balance flowering and growth. This is reinforced by good agricultural practices,” says Prof Josephat Kimatu, an agriculture lecturer at South Eastern Kenya University. Whereas prominent farmers sink boreholes to access the water they require to give their orchards an edge, smallholder farmers have turned to shallow wells.
Mr Nzioka represents an emerging community of smallholder farmers in the semi-arid region who tap into dry sandy riverbeds to sustain and add a competitive edge to their farming enterprises.
"We came together as three neighbours and dug a well. It produces enough water to sustain our farming throughout the dry season. My neighbours grow maize and assorted vegetables, which they sell during the dry spell. I find the pixie venture more valuable," he said. Mr Nzioka uses a diesel pump to draw water into a raised tank from where it is directed to the basins established around the base of the fruit trees using a hosepipe.
A spot check showed tens of such wells dug near a sand dam set across the river. Kaiti is one of the many seasonal rivers in the county which have seen a spike of such wells known locally as “mìvuko” following a successful campaign on sand conservation. Water from the wells is mainly used for livestock. These wells support a thriving water vending business at the county headquarters.
"The ‘mivuko’ at River Kaiti do not run dry throughout the dry season thanks to the sand dam set up across the river," said Lazarus Musyimi. The 33-year-old former sand miner is among local sand conservation champions who own the wells. They charge Sh70 to fill a three-wheeler and Sh200 to fill a tractor tanker. The water vendors sell a jerrican at Sh20 in the busy town.
Mr Musyimi and Mr Nzioka's enterprises are a motif of a sand conservation success story that is replicated across the county. The campaign started in 2014, five years before the United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) raised an alarm over the growing demand for sand in the world. In its 2019 report titled Sand and Sustainability: Find new solutions for Environmental Governance of Global Sand Resources, Unep called for the regulation of sand mining and trade. In a subsequent report, the agency celebrated Makueni’s move to regulate sand mining and trade as trailblazing. Many rivers and streams in the region, which had turned into canyons due to wanton sand mining, have since recovered, spawning multiple farming ventures along the waterways that were once battlefields between hirelings of sand merchants and conservationists. The sand conservation drive is pegged on Makueni Sand Conservation and Utilisation Act, a 2015 law that has enabled the county government to significantly turn around river ecosystems that had been scarred.
The sand law criminalises commercial harvesting of the commodity unless it is sanctioned by Makueni Sand Conservation and Utilisation Authority, an agency tasked with restoring river ecosystems and regulating trade in sand. It also blacklists the transportation of sand through the county at night. Importantly, it spells out an elaborate formula that promotes equitable sharing of the money accrued from the sale of sand.
The devolved unit works hand in hand with riparian communities to restore rivers through curbing cultivation along riverbanks, growing Napier grass and bamboo along river banks and installing sand dams to restore the riverbeds that had been sagging under the weights of years of unregulated sand mining. "As the sand piles in the riverbed and as a fall back from sand dams, it acts as a water reservoir. It retains water over a long period of time during the dry season. The depth of the sand determines its water retention," said Phillip Nzei, the managing director at the sand conservation agency.
Mr Nzei attributes the success of the sand conservation drive campaign to individuals such as Mr Nzioka and Mr Musyimi as well as riparian communities. "At this stage, we cannot say that we, as the county government, are actively involved in managing sand. The community has taken up the role after realising the importance of sand conservation. They are quick to raise an alarm when they see anyone practising sand mining. We are now going to the next level where we are talking about guided utilisation. Part of this utilisation is setting up water sumps and pumping the water to the adjacent communities," he said. This explains the county government's constant headache as it attempts to strike a balance between sand conservation and utilisation at the section of River Kaiti, which passes through Wote Town.
Mr Kimuyu and Mr Nzioka are among hundreds of fruit farmers in Makueni County who are set to earn more from their ventures if a carbon trading plan that the government is developing comes to fruition. According to Makueni Environment Executive Sonia Nzilani, fruits farmers in the county are currently receiving training on how the trade in carbon, which is hailed as a climate change resilience building initiative, works.
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August 17, 2023 at 12:00PM
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Below sandy, dry riverbeds: A medicine for fruit farming - Nation
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