Magical dry land farm run by a priest

Had the orderlies at the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Turkana not told Smart Harvest that the person we were going to meet was a priest, Concorde Akimana would have easily passed for a farmer trying his luck in the punishing Lodwar climate.

He shows up on the verandah of his house in a grey T-shirt, beige khaki shorts with pockets on the side and gumboots carrying four stacked trays of eggs. The heavy Central African accent in his Swahili notwithstanding, Fr Akimana appears completely at home.

Water spinach

“It is the time for harvesting now,” he chuckles.

“We begin from up,” he adds as he leads us to a storied chicken coop with one of his employees in tow.

There were four other chicken coops in the compound filled with layers and broilers of different sizes.

The first one immediately next to his house with five brooders inside had just been emptied that morning and smell of chicken manure and heat was still present when the door swung open.

“We just transferred the broilers to a growing pen since they have attained two weeks,” he says.

“Last year, we raised Sh500,000 from this project. The demand is crazy you need to be a farmer here and see for yourself. In fact, if I was able to I will do more,” he says.

In a farm where rarely anything goes to waste, the manure from the chicken coops are used to grow sukuma wiki, spinach and an Asian vegetable known as Kangkunk or water spinach.

The plant’s ideal growing ground is water ways or moist soils, hence its name.

It flourishes naturally in waterways and it became a popular war time crop in Asia during the Second World War and is a popular dish in the continent where it is mostly used in rice dishes with meat.

They can be germinated either through using seeds or cutting their vines like sweet potatoes.

Catholic brothers who visited the diocese from Indonesia brought the seeds to the farm for a trial and the priest says it is one of the sweetest vegetables he has ever eaten.

And to prove his point he asks one of his farm hands: “Emmanuel hebu kidogo. Ambia hawa wazee vile hii mboga ni tamu. Ushawahi kula mboga yote tamu kuliko hii? (Emmanuel tell these how this vegetables are sweet. Have you ever tasted anything better than this?”

“Matawi yake ni kama mboga kienyeji. (It has a similar taste with traditional vegetables),” responds his farm hand.

Dam liners

All his vegetables are planted in old plastic tanks cut to almost knee-length whose interiors are lined up with dam liners.

The dam liners, he says keep the soil moist. And since the vegetables are planted close together they do not wither even when the sun is too hot.

“Lodwar’s soil from my experience is good for farming. You only need water and good agricultural practice and this place will be feeding the whole country,” he says.

“There are some organisations doing that but this requires a lot of dedication. The whole of Turkana for a long time has been a pastoral county, introducing modern agriculture is entirely a new thing so a lot still needs to be done,” he says.

A Rwandese by descent who came to Lodwar from Kakamega in 2012 as a volunteer due to a shortage of priests, the man of cloth has transformed his compound into a model farm providing produce to a food deficient town.

In the process, he has defied the notion that nothing can grow in Turkana or whether it is possible to carry out agribusiness in a county described as having one of the highest annual temperatures in the world.

According to the National Meteorological Service, Turkana’s average annual temperature is 29 °C (84.2 °F) while the average annual rainfall is about 186 mm.

Hygiene standards

This punishing weather has over the years turned Turkana into a county constantly in need of food aid as pastoralism practised by its inhabitants for centuries increasingly becomes an unstainable source of livelihood due to climate change.

The chicken coop is an impressive spot.

“These are very lucky chicken, they live upstairs, come here by plane and they are fed by a priest,” he says as we approach the coop.

“Make sure you disinfect the soles of your shoes on the dip before getting in,” he instructs team.

A bucket full of eggs on the inside of the doorway described a good morning for the priest cum farmer but there was more to come.

Inside the main coop which houses at least 1,200 layers, the birds have been separated according to their ages for easy monitoring.

Sick birds

The ones already in the egg laying age are housed on the top floor whose nests are placed close to the ceiling made of reeds in order to control the temperature.

Fr Akimana spends more than an hour every day after the birds have been fed in the morning to monitor them in order to identify any sickness or abnormality.

He is vigilant because there are no effective veterinary services in Lodwar and incase the birds fall ill he will be forced to call for a vet from Kitale or Kapenguria.

Feed was also an issue, up until recently.

Up to a few months ago, the farm had to order for feed from Kitale too.

“We used to getting feeds from Kitale but these days we have Sidai here in Lodwar. They manufacture the feeds and the medicines but if the birds get sick most of the drugs have to come from Nairobi or Kitale. By the time the reach here the disease has already spread,” he said.

He goes on: “Thank God that is yet to happen. But remember if you follow the rule book on how to keep chicken on large scale it is difficult for the birds to get ill. We are very careful on that end,” he says.

Headquartered in Ngong, Sidai Animal Feeds recently opened a franchise in Lodwar town making it easier for those practicing agribusiness like Fr Akimana.

However the absence of day-old chicks suppliers in the town means the birds have to be brought in by air from Kenchick in Eldoret.

Airlines charge Sh200 per kilo of the boxes carrying the day-old chicks which are flown as cargo. This is logistically challenging, but the priest says it is totally worth it because of the demand for poultry products.

Cut costs

Apart from layers, he keeps an average 700 broilers per cycle which are supplied to local hotels. He says the farm can make at least Sh50,000 every time they slaughter the broilers after attaining six weeks of age.

“All our market is local. Remember Lodwar imports most of its food so there is a huge gap. Everything being eaten here comes from either Kitale or Uganda so we realised with Bishop that we need to be self-reliant,” he says.

“Those missionaries who came here had support from home. They did not have to struggle like this in order to live, but bishop comes from Baringo and I am from Rwanda,” he adds.

Since Lodwar is hot, artificial heating in the brooders is switched off after two weeks thus lowering the maintenance costs.

Water for the farm is received from the Lodwar Water and Sanitation Company.

It is pumped to the upper section of the farm, then flows down by gravity to the chicken coops and a green house where the priest intends to plant capsicum.

“This is the first time we are trying them but we believe they will turn out OK,” he adds.