Ideas & Debate

Ride on creative marketing and technology to revive agriculture

agric

Traders at Karatina open air market, Nyeri County. The famous market is evidence of an area still strong in horticultural enterprise . PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI

I may be a chemical engineer domiciled in the oil and gas sector, but since 1950s I have been directly or indirectly associated with agriculture in Mathira Sub-county of Nyeri County. The agro-economic history narrated here shows how a systemic approach to agricultural development created a first class cash crop economy, which was subsequently allowed to collapse in 1980/90s and which we are yet to successfully revive.

In early 1940s, a huge vegetable processing factory existed at Karatina, the chief town of Mathira, fed with produce from a first-class integrated irrigation system. It was a World War II (1939-45) project to feed the British armies across the world. The factory dried and packaged a variety of vegetables for export to the war fields. Located adjacent to the rail station, the factory dispatched packages by rail directly to Mombasa port.

Mathira is situated on a fairly level plateau served by numerous rivers and streams from Mt Kenya with River Ragati being the “Nile” of the area.

Most of the river valleys in Mathira are wide and fairly level and quite ideal for gravity-enabled furrow irrigation. These features may have advised the colonial government’s choice of Mathira for this war time food project.

Irrigation infrastructure consisted an elaborate system of canals and dams, some of which survive to this day. To move produce to the factory a network of all weather murram roads were constructed across Mathira. Trucks and ox wagons ferried produce to the factory.

When the war ended in 1945, the government planned to transfer ownership of the factory to European investors.

But this met the opposition of the energetic and fiery “Young Turks” just returned from the World War. They agitated and organised farmers’ boycotts to demand local African shareholding of the factory. The lengthy boycott eventually led to plant closure and relocation to Naivasha.

The experience and enterprise gained from the project was never lost. Immediately after the factory closure Mathira became the main “exporter” of fresh produce to the Nairobi wholesale market. When the Mau Mau war broke out in 1952/53, organised horticulture economy in Mathira virtually collapsed.

However, as soon as the state of emergency was lifted at the end of 1959, truckloads of vegetables to Nairobi resumed. The famous Karatina open air market is evidence of an area that is still strong in horticultural enterprise.

The other significant economic product in Mathira in the 1940s/50s was the bark (“magoko” in Kikuyu) from wattle trees, which clustered most of the higher grounds. The bark was harvested, sun-dried and brought to Karatina where it was loaded onto rail wagons to a Thika factory that extracted tannin for treating leather. The Thika and Eldoret tannin factories were the main exporters of this product.

Until late 1940s, coffee and tea planting by Africans was illegal, being a preserve of white farmers. However, earnest push for organised coffee and tea planting in Mathira was when the Mau Mau crisis ebbed and land consolidation was done, which was around 1957.

Wattle trees and other bushes on the higher grounds were cleared to give way to coffee and tea planting.

In respect of coffee, planting and husbandry were strictly supervised by government extension officers to ensure quality. Terracing, organic manure, thick layers of mulching all ensured fast growth of a very healthy crop. Coffee pulping factories were set up by co-operative societies.

Similar successes were taking place in the upper cooler tea zones adjacent to Mt Kenya forests where a tea factory was set up around 1957. The Wambugu Farmers College near Nyeri town provided basic farmer training.

Modern dairy farming was introduced in Mathira in the first few years of 1960s. Using cash proceeds from coffee and tea, farmers purchased grade cows from the adjacent white settled areas (Kieni sub-county) where departing European farmers were disposing of their assets as signs of independence loomed in the air.

Dairy farming was mobilised by the Mathira Dairymen Co-op Society which was formed around 1961 and within a few years Mathira was a major deliverer of milk to KCC. A lot was learned from Chief Muhoya’s location in Tetu where advanced dairy farming had been pioneered much earlier.

At independence, Mathira and indeed most of Central Province had the essential support systems and marketing infrastructure for coffee, tea and dairy sectors. It was a fast and unbelievable recovery from the ashes of the economic collapse during the Mau Mau crisis 10 year earlier.

EXPAND SECTOR

The independence government role was to expand sector opportunities and capacity by creating wider national institutions to empower agriculture and the farmer. As the cash crop economy blossomed, household incomes increased, children were educated, livelihoods were modernised, and employment in rural areas was more assured.

All this was reversed in the period 1980/90s when the Moi government permitted agriculture support and marketing systems and infrastructure to collapse. And the subsequent governments have not significantly prioritised revival of agriculture.

New challenges now exist and these include population and land pressure; an acknowledged widespread water scarcity; and apparent indifference to agriculture by the millennial generation. Creative marketing systems and technology must be the guiding factors to surmount these challenges to revive agriculture to its former pioneering glory.