Washington — Professionals from Kenya and Uganda who want to strengthen their countries’ food and agriculture sectors will use some ideas they learned during one-month fellowships that took them to three American states.
The visits, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, ended with a conference in October in Washington, where they met experts in their fields and discussed how they will apply what they learned when they return home. They were part of a group of more than 240 international specialists in food security, climate change, education, health and legislative development who exchanged ideas with American counterparts in governments, nonprofit groups and businesses in Colorado, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.
“We learned how the media, communities and policymakers can link their efforts to address a country’s food security issues,” said Josephine Kamau, an assistant director in Kenya’s Ministry of Livestock Development. She spent time with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s office in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and visited farms nearby. “If we all work together to address food security in our communities, we all will benefit,” she said.
In Denver, visiting fellows learned about urban agriculture. Anthony Obudi Owor, a program coordinator for Uganda’s National Agricultural Advisory Services, described a Denver agriculture cooperative of 11 neighboring gardens. Cooperative members pay fees, he said, and on specified days members meet to pick up baskets of free food grown in the gardens. The cooperative also provides food to low-income people in the neighborhood. He said the cooperative members call it “urbiculture.”
“Many people are moving to cities. We must produce more food where the people are,” said Michael Akhwale, an agronomist with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and one of the group members who went to Denver.
Owor said he learned to build what is called a hoop house — a 12-foot by 24-foot (3.6-meter by 7.3-meter) plastic-covered greenhouse with an arched roof. He built one in a week, and then his hosts presented him with materials for a hoop house that Owor plans to build at home. He also learned about beekeeping and will place hives in his orange and mango groves. He learned about simple irrigation techniques and about rain harvesting, collecting rain water as it drips off roofs and storing it in tanks. During dry seasons, farmers can tap the saved water so their crops can continue to grow.
Owor described another type of urban agriculture he learned from a nonprofit called Growing Power in Milwaukee. Called aquaponics, it is the cultivation of small fish with vegetables and herbs, all together in a controlled indoor environment.
An officer with Kenya’s agriculture ministry, Samuel Mwangi, said Kenya needs stronger links between research, extension services and training efforts so more knowledge gets to more farmers. Rose Shivambo, a 28-year-old farmer and community volunteer, said more needs to be done to reach people in remote areas with extension services.
Kenya also needs to teach farmers to better diversify the crops they grow to avoid the risk of a single crop being devastated by drought, disease or pests, said Hassan Abdi. The 53-year-old, who chairs Kenya’s Tana River District Stakeholders Forum, said more efforts are needed to integrate youth into agriculture through efforts such as school gardens.
Helping people to better understand the link between nutrition and agriculture is also needed, noted Rose Chiteva, a researcher at the Kenya Forestry Research Institute.
The next step is to teach people to learn to try eating different foods to get more nutrition, Akhwale added.
Alex Chamwada, editor with Royal Media Services in Kenya, hopes the members of the group will urge their governments to invest more in research and technology.
The visiting fellows learned about more than crops; they also learned about how the U.S. Department of Agriculture is helping disadvantaged small farmers and gardeners, as well as minority farmers like African Americans and Native Americans. The fellows met with members of the local branch of the National Women in Agriculture Association and visited a museum of the history and culture of the Cherokee Nation, said Halima Nenkari, who is director of livestock production in Kenya’s Ministry of Livestock Development and works with Kamau.
Every year, more than 50,000 international and American participants take part in a wide range of exchange programs funded by the State Department.
