Sack helped me think business, says farmer

By Mangoa Mosota

Armed with a watering can, jerricans and a lantern lamp, Isaiah Obiro usually starts work at his tree nursery at 3am.

With the lamp light, he fetches water from a nearby stream to water the seedlings at night.

Obiro, 47, is among 15 farmers sponsored by a local NGO for tree-planting business. His nursery has more than 20,000 seedlings and is the biggest in Nyandiwa sub-location, Siaya District.

Isaiah Obiro at his tree nursery. [PHOTOS: Mangoa Mosota/STANDARD]

He has planted more than 20 tree species and also grafts avocado, mango and paw paw fruit seedlings at Isaya Tree Nursery. Other plants are eucalyptus, which can be used for electricity power poles, Jatropha carcas for a bio fuel and Calliandra calothyrsus for fodder.

Obiro says he began the business when he was retrenched as a security guard at a Nairobi-based security firm. He had worked with the firm for nine years.

He says his newfound job is paying off better than the former. His work has attracted several foreigners, including researchers from the US’s Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

"Trees are life but many Kenyans do not value them. There is a lot of tree felling with unmatched planting," observes the father of six.

He vows to preach the gospel of tree planting to as many people as he can reach. Early this year, he approached the management of a Kisumu-based vernacular FM station and requested for a chance to do an advocacy programme on tree planting.

He was given two 30-minute sessions of call-in programmes to teach listeners how to plant trees.

"Listeners asked various questions. Many appreciated the tree-planting knowledge I shared with them," he says.

Obiro only has a Certificate of Primary Education qualification. His former employer laid off staff who had not attained Form Four education. Back at his rural home, Obiro had to start from scratch. He had not built a house for his family.

"Getting trees to put up a house was a challenge," he explains. This marked the beginning of his tree-planting ambitions.

Expects more

And he says his efforts are now paying off. Between August and November, Obiro had earned more than Sh30,000 from the sale of seedlings.

He expects to make about Sh100,000 from the remaining seedlings in March/April season. Grafted seedlings sell at an average of Sh300.

Obiro also plants tomatoes, cabbages and sukuma wiki in his one-acre piece of land through inter-cropping. He also wants to start fish farming.

He works with his wife, Anastasia Atieno, and two casual workers.

Sauri Millennium Villages Project (MVP) sponsors 15 farmers who run tree nurseries as a business venture in Yala division.

MVP is a model for helping impoverished communities in developing countries out of extreme poverty, and ambitiously achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

An environment facilitator for Sauri MVP Kipkemboi Kandie says tree-planting is central in achieving environmental sustainability — MDG number seven.

According to MVP, individual farmers around the region have planted more than 2.3 million trees in two years.

"In the same period, youth groups have planted 172,000 trees and schools 55,000. The total number of trees planted in the cluster is about four million," Kandie explains.

Challenges notwithstanding, Obiro’s five-year plan is to expand the nursery to accommodate more than 100,000 seedlings.

He also hopes to buy a pickup truck to ease transportation of seedlings to far-flung markets.

 

Read all about: tree-planting Sauri Millennium Villages Project Millennium Development Goals MDGs

 

 

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