I’m a farmer in Kajiado Kenya. Our land is so fertile but the problem is lack of water. I am looking for a partner who can help in sinking a borehole for commercial farming of horticulture and herbs
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I am also based in Kajiado County. This is a common problem but we can put our heads together.
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You don’t necessarily need to drill a deep well. I put several water harvesting trenches on our farm in Central Tanzania, and now I have water all year round in my shallow wells. I can take out 5,000-10,000 liters a day and still be fine.
Search on youtube for “water harvesting swales”.
It’s a lot cheaper, and also more sustainable.
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Ok thanks for letting me know.
You can find more infos in these videos:
That should give you a good picture on how to start.
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That’s exactly the kind of information I was looking for. I have started farming in Eastern Uganda. Unfortunately, it suffers from both poor soils and being in a semi-arid region.
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Sorry to hear that. Use own made manure from green vegetation and animal manures.
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Try to get into contact with someone who teaches permaculture in Uganda and/or Kenya. Unfortunately, I don’t know anybody there personally.
There is a whatsapp group for permaculture/agroecology in Africa, and there are a number of Ugandans and Kenyans in that group as well. I can try to get some information for you there.
Alternatively, you can just search for “permaculture uganda” or “permaculture kenya” on google or youtube and you will get some results. Then go there and look what they are doing.
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Thanks, I’ll check them out.
Good morning from Kenya. I just started the water harvesting and the rain came just after the symposium we had in South Sudan.
I hadn’t known the importance. It was only used for watering animals
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I don’t think you can overestimate the importance of rain water harvesting. We have a deep well that we use together with the neighboring teacher’s college. When we started the project in 2017, the deep well (150m) gave slightly salty water. But since we started rain water harvesting, the water gets sweeter and sweeter slowly. So rain water harvesting will benefit you, but it will also have an impact on the lower ground levels and the whole region (depending on the area you are doing it on).
Many blessings! May God give you the annointing to get others to do it, too!
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Great to hear from you neighbor. I am across in Kenya and introducing NO-Till farming practice to retain soil fertility. For 10plus years No-Till organic gardening has proved to be the game changer for me.
God has been faithful and now I am teaching others across the country.
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I think the no till is not practical on large scale farming
You mean the no-til farming that is practiced on millions of acres in the U.S? With big machinery, direct seeding trailors and stuff? Oh, believe me, it is VERY practical on large scale farming - as long as you have the appropriate machinery for it. That’s the main drawback in East Africa, the lack of the right equipment.
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I now need to look up what no till farming is… I had simply assumed that it was no how or tools ( machinery etc) are used.
Thanks
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No big deal, we’re all learning all the time.
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What is available in East Africa in plenty is affordable labour for the large scale farms. You should see the gangs of workers on the farms in the rift-valley when planting, weeding or top-dressing is being carried out.
No one solution is appropriate for every region.
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Actually, the founder of FGW (Farming God’s Way) used to farm 500 hectares with day laborers and hoes before no-till tractor equipment was available…
I’ve seen videos where people thought that no-till or FGW meant to plant into the grass. That is a grave misunderstanding. Of course nothing came out of this.
Watu wangu wanaangamia kwa kukosa maarifa. There are many simple solutions for a lot of problems, but they are not taught… And where traditional sustainable solutions existed, they were often wiped out by stupid colonialists.