While other farmers in Western Kenya are planting good old maize, sugarcane, tomatoes and bananas, some are thinking out of the box. They are venturing into a new turf few know exists or that it has great prospects. Let’s talk about roselle and the daring farmer who has put her money in it and she is reaping big.
Meet Tabitha Omoga from Kakamega County, one of the few roselle farmers whose life has been transformed by this little known crop. Started as a joke in 2001, but now she has a solid base of clients and is eyeing the international market.
“Fourteen years ago, I attended a Ministry of Agriculture seminar where something interesting was being talked about, a crop called roselle. The officer spoke big about the crop and he won my heart plus that of other attendees,” Ms Omoga, a former agricultural officer Ministry of Agriculture starts off the interview at her home in Kilimani.
She was so fascinated by the crop she vowed to research more on it. And in an interesting twist, she happened to be among officers tasked by the Ministry to help farmers embrace it in Western Kenya. That is how her love affair with the crop began.
“Being the extension officer to sensitise the locals on it, I had to be armed with sufficient knowledge on it. I learnt everything from its history, benefits and commercial use. The fact that it has a medicinal value and it can thrive in Kakamega where I was based, made me yearn to plant Roselle ,” she says of the crop common in Western and Nyanza.
Roselle, a perennial woody shrub, is mainly grown for calyces (petals) that are used to make beverages believed to have medicinal value, jams and even jellies. Its leaves are eaten in fruit salad too.
In the same year, Omoga then a maize farmer decided to plant the crop on her quarter acre farm. As more people started to learn about its medicinal properties, demand started growing. Now she has clients from individuals, to supermarkets and hotels in Kakamega.
“It began as a small hobby and I realised its demand unlike that of maize was high. Interestingly people used to walk to my home to buy calyces, something that never happened with my maize which I had to take to the market for sale. When I saw that interest, I was forced to uproot the maize and concentrate on the Roselle,” she says.
She now sells the calyces (petals) in a 2 kilogram tin (gorogoro) at about Sh500 to local buyers. A tin goes for about Sh800.
Omoga is so passionate about this crop, neighbours flock her farm to come learn more about it.
During this interview a team of farmers from Lurambi had come for a demonstration tour.
“I brought this group to learn from her after hearing that this crop is profitable but needs technical harvesting skills and care,” says Owens Ochango a mentor at Inter regional Economic network (IREN) Kenya a foundation that links successful farmers to would be farmers around the country. Even though Omoga is doing well with this crop, some farmers gave up along the way because tending to the crop is tedious.
Tedious
“What discourages many farmers from growing this crop is because harvesting the petals is a cumbersome task. You have to tread gingerly or risk losing or destroying the seed inside the fruit. You remove the petals softly, because it can be detached from the stem together with the fruit when you do it roughly. Apparently this process has proved tricky to many new farmers of this crop,” explains Omoga.
That harvesting is a delicate task and if a farmer gets it wrong, they lose their crop.
The farmer goes on to explain that with roselle a farmer starts to harvest after four months it flowers and then after 20 days you start harvesting the petal calyces, which grow on buds gingerly so as to retain the fruit intact.
“This is done so that the seeds can be left in the bud to allow them to dry and harvest for planting next season,” she says.
Two years into growing the crop she felt an inner urge to realise its full potential and that is how she entered into the value addition chain.
Cures cough
Now she not only grows the crop but also makes juices that she supplies to primary schools around Kakamega and in a local market.
“I boil the calyces in water sieve and add sugar to make juice. The juice can be stabilised by adding lemon which also give it a crispy taste. I sell one litre at Sh150. For school kids I package even in packs that go for as little as Sh10,” she says.
She also makes tea and jam which are popular with locals, using the fruit.
“Making home jam is as easy I boil in water interior buds of the roselle flowers until they become heavy. I do a ratio of one table spoon of sugar to one table soon of the interior buds. The jam is just like plum jam in taste if not sweeter,” she says. The jam, which she sells to individuals and local supermarkets retails at Sh70 per 250 milliliters.
To help her with the workload, she has employed three girls who help with the processing of the beverages and two boys who sell in schools and streets.
“I get double if not triple what I used to when I ordinarily sold the calyces,” she says.
A nutritionist at Kenya Agriculture Livestock Organisation (Karlo) Kakamega and a known crusader for the plant Rhoda Nungo, sheds more light on the crop.
First, she says the plant thrives well in not so fertile areas.
“The crop originated from Sudan which is semi-arid. Roselle farming is not as good in western region as it is in Meru where it is grown on large scale for export. Locally, I have trained farmers after realising a knowledge gap among many of them growing the crop and many have taken to it,” she says.
Dr Nungo also speaks highly about its medicinal value.
“You can make tea by simply boiling the petals of a roselle flower in water for a few minutes them add some sugar and you are good to go. Roselle tea sometimes called Sudan Tea has calyx infusion that is believed to cure cough and biliousness (an excess secretion of bile causing gastric distress). It is also good for those who lack sleep and gives the body relief,” says the researcher.
Where it grows
According to Dr Nungo Roselle plant do well in sandy to clay soils and needs at least 12 hours exposure to sunlight to realise meaningful harvest that is eight tonnes of fruits per acre or one kilograms or one and a half kilogram per plant.
She rates it as a ‘strongly’ upcoming crop that needs adequate research because of its multiple use and profitability to farmers.
“I gave ten seeds to a group of farmers in Busia and today they are doing the crop on a large scale. The plant grows up to around seven feet up and you have to harvest from the base where mature fruits form first,” she says.
The other value addition bit of the crop is in drying the seed for sale which is also done by Omoga.
