Mennonite Weekly Review

KOLA, Kenya — Changes in climate patterns here make it impossible for small-scale farmers to continue growing primary food crops such as maize and beans, says a local farmer.

Joshua Mukusya said Kenyan farmers are trying to adjust to the negative effects of climate change, but “the demand is bigger than we can reach.” — Photo by Dan Wiens

About 50 years ago farmers could expect to produce 25 bags of maize from one hectare — each bag weighing 90 kilograms, said Joshua Mukusya, a smallholder farmer whose family has been farming for generations in Kola, a community in the semi-arid Machakos District. “Now, you will be very lucky if you get five bags per hectare.”

Global climate change is seen as the major factor contributing to rising temperatures, delayed and unreliable rainfall, soil erosion and droughts that are becoming more severe and less predictable.

“The climate is changing; it is very clear,” said Mukusya, a leader of the Utooni Development Organization, a Mennonite Central Committee partner organization that helps rural families improve food and water security by terracing land, building sand dams and planting trees.

Mukusya hopes discussions at this month’s Copenhagen conference on climate change will lead to bold and meaningful measures that will increase international support to help the country improve food production, restore water tables and redevelop pastures and wildlife habitat.

“The majority of people here have no resources to cope with the situation,” he said. “If we don’t make changes, we cannot survive.”

With assistance from MCC and other groups, Utooni Development Organization is helping rural families rediscover skills to grow, cook and store indigenous crops such as millet, sorghum, cowpeas, cassava and sweet potatoes.

“Maize and beans used to grow well in our climate but we are now going back to the old crops which can withstand the drought,” he said.

Rural families are also improving agricultural productivity and sustainability through building sand dams, reducing soil erosion, planting trees, and other soil and water conservation projects.

“People are interested in making change,” Mukusya said. “Everybody recognizes there is a need for change but the demand is bigger than we can reach.”