Israeli model farms to boost food supply

Although Israel is food sufficient because of using irrigation to grow food, the cost of production there is becoming higher because of high labour costs. The cost of scarce arable land is also high.

“Supplying food to Israel is a big business opportunity that Kenya can take advantage of,” said the Mr Keidar. The farms will also increase Kenya’s capacity to make effective use of water resource for agriculture.

The model farms are equipped with drip irrigation system which feeds water directly to the plant. The system is timed to drip only the needed water, making it use least amount of the resource.

About 99 per cent of Kenya’s agriculture is rain fed and shortage of rainfall has caused severe food shortage ravaging the country today. The wide use of these farms is expected to lead into culture change as farmers see the value of storing water.

But farmers need to be educated on how to harvest rainwater, said David Mbugua, the chairman of Kenya Rainwater Association.

Farmers can use simple containers to capture water and store it for future use or make small dams by digging holes and lining them with polythene bags to capture and store rain water.

Henry Kinyua of Technoserve, an organisation that works to empower small holder farmers, said in areas where farmers are growing bananas using drip irrigation, there has been a “100 per cent yield difference with their counterparts who are not using irrigation.”

“Irrigation doubles yields,” he said. It also makes the farmer promise the market to deliver because there will be not rise of crop failure because of lack or shortage of rainfall.