Birds ruin farmers’ deal with brewers

Sorghum farmers in Makueni County have had to cancel their contract with brewers following destruction caused by birds on their crop.

Brewers normally prefer Gadam variety for processing of Keg. However, this variety is liked by birds and they end up eating everything that growers have planted, subjecting them to losses.

Wilson Lati, a farmer in Makueni says they were contracted by East African Breweries in 2018 to grow sorghum but abandoned it two years later because of birds.

“We suffered huge losses because of birds and that is why most of us abandoned the crop though we had been contracted to grow white sorghum used for manufacturing Keg,” said Mr Lati.

However, Egerton University has now developed a variety that is not liked by birds and has seen some of the farmers who had abandoned the crop start farming again.

Bernard Biwott, a seed specialist at Egerton, says farmers should embrace the new variety.

“Gadam is liked by birds and they are susceptible to pests. We have released Egerton University Sorghum 1 that has high nutritive value and cannot be destroyed by birds,” said Mr Biwott.

Apart from being less attractive to birds, the new variety released with the support Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics-ICRISAT, is also fast maturing, drought resistant and high yielding.

The new type has a potential to produce three tonnes per hectare, compared to the current popular Gadam, which produces an average of 500 kilos.

ICRISAT is training farmers on seed production and proper sorghum husbandry to increase production. The government has been pushing for scaling up of the orphaned crops because they have a potential to cut overreliance on maize, hence saving the country a huge import bill on foods.

Kenya is a maize deficit country and has to import maize from neighbouring countries of Uganda and Tanzania.