By Kimani Chege

WHEN Waigwa Murage realised that returns from his small piece of land in the township of Ongata Rongai, on the southern outskirts of Nairobi, were dwindling, he opted for a different activity. Diminishing incomes from unstable dairy farming, an unreliable horticultural market and the ever loss-making coffee had conspired to make a change inevitable.
The same fate has befallen millions of farmers in Kenya trying to make ends meet with traditional crops like tea and coffee. Those in the drier lands have for a long time depended on food donations as drought has always wreaked havoc on their crops.
It is due to this fact that a lot of Kenyan farmers are opting for commercial growing of trees. Though a new concept in the country, many see it as a sure way of turning things around.
So serious has the switch been that farmers are uprooting their coffee bushes and replacing them with several varieties of trees. They argue that coffee is no longer as profitable as it was in the early 1980s.
The farmers, having noticed a rising demand for timber, firewood, power and telephone poles and charcoal, have invested in fast-maturing trees.
Private nurseries have also joined the fray providing millions of seedlings and cuttings and helping multiplying trees in a big way. Using modern technologies like tissue culture, hybridisation and cloned forestry technology, the private nurseries are involved in tree improvement and rapid propagation of suitable planting material, especially for the rural poor-resource communities.
One of the private nurseries, the
Tree Biotechnology Project (TBP), is producing millions of seedlings and clones at their 14-acre nursery at the Karura forest in the northern outskirts of the Kenyan capital.
This is a private-public sector collaboration of technology transfer between several government departments, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation of the UK, the International Service of Acquisition of Agri-biotech for Applications (ISAAA) and Mondi Forest of South Africa.
The organisations are committed to a vision of sustainable development through technology to reduce poverty in developing countries in line with the millennium goals set by the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.
TBP is involved in propagation and distribution of hybrid trees, mainly the Eucalyptus species, throughout East Africa. The project is also adopting local indigenous trees such as prunus africana and mellia volkensi as well as other naturalised species like grivellea robusta.
The project started with the importation of clean mother clones from Mondi Forest in South Africa which have been multiplied into million of trees.
The trees are fast growing, fast maturing. Within four to 10 years, the trees are ready for harvesting. And they can be used for different purposes. The trees can comfortably be intercropped with other crops without affecting their growth, as the canopy does not limit to them.
At two years, the trees are ready for thatching and honeybee hive mounting, firewood and charcoal at three years, building posts at four years. After that they can be harvested for telephone and power poles.
Project manager Benson Kanyi says though the project is only three years old, it has achieved much in demonstrating that trees can be used to preserve biodiversity, generate income and employment as well as act as a source of fuel.
He says there are millions of farmers who have approached him for quality eucalyptus trees.
“Farmers have noticed that there is a big market for commercial trees. That is why we are receiving a lot of customers seeking our advice. We are always busy getting farmers started with new tree fields,” said Kanyi.
“A farmer can change to any crop he wishes to plant. We don’t decide for them what to plant. After all a farmer is an entrepreneur who should make business decisions depending on profits. If one decides to buy our trees for planting, we offer him the extension services required,” he added. He says the wood industry is a key one and if properly utilised can help boost the economic growth of a country, adding that 15 % of South Africans are employed by the sector.
“We have farmers who have more than 5,000 acres under the trees. The number is increasing and we expect the demand to rise. Imagine how many people will be employed by the farmers.”
Kanyi calls for more private and public initiatives to assist the government plant and achieve the set 800 million trees per year, pointing out that different players can help reduce the demand both locally and regionally. “We have an initial capacity of 4 million plantlets annually. If there are 20 or so other nurseries producing similar numbers, then we are talking of over 80 million which the government has set out to plant annually.”
Tree farming is truly taking a new shape. The farmers are now weeding, applying fertilizer and caring for the trees as they have always done to other crops. This has seen tree growing even in areas traditionally thought not fit for farming. These include the semi-arid areas of Ukambani, Maasailand, and other parts of north Kenya. The hybrid trees can do exceptionally well in these areas as trials, conducted throughout Kenya and especially in these dry areas, have proved successful. “ Studies have shown that these hybrid trees do well in areas like Najiv in Israel with an annual rainfall of below 200 mm. If this is so, then most parts of Kenya can grow them and reap benefits,” adds Ms Rose Makena, the project marketing and extension officer. Another private nursery, Genetics Technologies Ltd (GTL), has a capacity of producing of almost 25 million plantlets, through tissue culture micro propagation.
GTL is also involved in propagation of industrial crops like sugarcane, pyrethrum, and coffee, horticultural crops, and now forest trees.