Groups push for door-to-door climate change drives in Africa

The narrow road leading to Muguga in Kiambu District was a known nightmare a few years ago for motorists trying to avoid contact with lorries that drove into potato farms.

The harvest was plenty hence the beeline of transporters. The nightmare is no more, sadly.

The blossoming green landscape of Muguga does not feature potatoes anymore. And farmers are asking endless questions, some rhetoric.

Farmers have wandered into growing maize, but are still less satisfied looking at the thin harvest; they want to drop maize farming too.

What is holding the restless group is the question: What next? This question is adding salt to injury for the farmers who have been asking: What has happened?

A possible answer lies in another monster called climate change, which Africa, the less polluter, is being told will hit it unfairly hard.

Muguga was characterised by heavy rainfall favouring growing of potatoes.

This is what elderly farmers like James Waruinge have known for years until a few years ago.

New diseases and the changing weather patterns have robbed the area of traditional produce in what could also spell a death knell to farming in the region –– a key source of fresh foodstuff for Nairobi.

This is worrying farmers and researchers.

The former have been forced to try their hands on new crops and the researcher is seeing production dropping “significantly” in 10 years thanks to climate change.

“Potato yields has dropped significantly and almost all farmers have abandoned it for maize,” said Mr Waruinge.

For him, the problem was “new diseases” that started attacking potato farms.

Ms Lillian Njeri, a researcher at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari), said in an earlier interview: “The problem here is that weather patterns have changed and are unfavourable for growing potatoes.”

Even maize, she warned, would be a type that can withstand a harsher weather. “If measures are not taken to develop highly drought-resistant maize variety, production will drop significantly in the next 10 years.”