Now, we rely mostly on borehole water for farming or on foods we buy from the markets, making it difficult for wananchi to survive. Since we had food and water, we were healthy and clean and we required money for less than we do today.
Nevertheless, those families that have bananas, sugar cane, mangoes, oranges and other fruit trees continue to reap benefits from them. We need more of these everywhere.
We may not reclaim all the past glory but we can build resilience, prepare and protect ourselves against drought and its effects. There are many ways of doing this and some require government intervention like educating all of us about climate-smart agriculture, harvesting rain or harvesting water from the air, where there is no rain.
We can also teach ourselves to conserve moisture by covering our soils with leaves, trees, organic matter like manure to regenerate and build healthy soil, planting perennial and native foods, creating cool micro-climates like growing fences, trees and plants also act as windbreakers, recycling waste, using drip irrigation where possible.
However, the biggest solution to drought is to expand our forest cover, plant lots of trees especially indigenous and food trees and practise climate-smart agriculture by growing appropriate seeds for dry areas and planting enough food crops to ensure food security and good nutrition.
These call for concerted efforts and deliberate actions, investment and collaboration between national and county governments to support small and large-scale farmers, livestock and beekeepers and other forms of activities that produce food, build resilience against drought and protect our environment.
It is important to develop education programmes in all forms of farming especially dryland farming and climate-smart farming. With the benefits of internet and social media, extension officers may only be necessary in few cases.
Also, the Ministry of Agriculture may want to focus on making the study of agriculture more attractive, innovative and glamorous to attract more agricultural students and real practitioners. This is the only way to ensure food security and good nutrition for Kenya while building drought and climate resilience.
- Join the conversation @Koki_Muli @StandardKenya.