The First Ever Cotton Seed System to be put in place

Kiambu

Friday August 25, 2023

KNA Wangari Ndirangu

The government recently delivered 17 tonnes of BT cotton seeds to Busia County to boost the cotton production and revive the textile sector.

The Busia cotton project will act as a template in the government plan to increase yields and boost all agricultural value chains across the country.

As the government does this, the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO) is working towards establishing the first ever certified cotton seed system in the country.

“KALRO has already branded cotton seed that is certified and soon will be able to provide all cotton farmers with seed,” Teresia Okiyo a plant breeder and in charge of the cotton research Programme at KALRO KIBOs centre said.

Okiyo explained that in 2017, the Governement through KALRO’s fiber crops directorate in collaboration with the Brazilian cooperation agency and two countries in the region Tanzania and Burundi got involved in a project dubbed “Cotton Victoria” gearing towards contributing to improving the competitiveness of the cotton sector, capacity building and training on how to produce good seed

“Through this project, they were able to do a feasibility study armed with a lot of knowledge, as KALRO started advancing on varieties that they had namely KSA 81M and Hart 89M varieties suitable for ecological zones in Western and Eastern regions respectively.

This year, the plant breeder said, KALRO has planted 14 acres of seed at Kibo's centre while in Mwea centre 20 acres that will produce certified generation one seed.

“We started bulking the early generation seeds towards producing certified seeds and in 2018 we did generation one and in 2019 also but this year we managed to brand cotton seed that is certified and we believe that with time we are going to provide all our farmers with seed.

She, however, noted that the seed they have planted at their centres will be further multiplied together with some contracted farmers who will be doing the multiplication.

 “This project is going to set an entire seed system for us, the first one in the country after more than a hundred years after cotton was introduced and I think this is a real plus for us to be involved in the project,” Okiyo said and confirming that the equipment’s are already in place and what is left is just the building up of the structure to put seeds.

Farmers, Okiyo noted, were used to just getting seeds from the ginnery to plant and that there was never a system of producing certified seed for farmers and these same farmers were not practicing good agronomy like spacing, weeding, crop protection thus ending up losing yield with the time.

When it comes to off-taking, the researcher noted, the government has used a lot of money to completely put a new brand of ginnery in the Mulwanda area in Busia and it has a huge capacity even to absorb all the cotton being produced in this region”, she said.

Farmers, she added, will no longer talk about having nowhere to sell and also the prices that have been set by the government are good. “The government has now set a minimum price at Sh 55 and this could even rise.”

Okiyo encouraged farmers to make informed choices and decisions on where to sell, how to bargain and even more on how to manage their crops since the tropical environment in the area normally has a big challenge of weeds that can be able to bring about almost 50 percent loss in one’s field

“Many of our farmers were never weeding so we have weeding trials and we have established that if a farmer weeds within the first 30 days of crop emergence and another one at 60 after, the crop smothers weeds and we are therefore recommending just two wedding season per season and the farmer will be able to harvest a very good crop,” she said.

KALRO, she said, is training farmers on production management especially now that for Cotton whether one uses organic farming, it has to be sprayed though not in blanket sprays but farmers can scout and spray if the insect damage reaches some threshold.

Overall, Okiyo advised farmers to follow good agricultural practices when it comes to pest control, also to do crop rotation by breaking the plant with cereals and legumes, and also practice intercropping the cotton with determinant legumes be it beans, cowpeas, or even pulses such as green grams as well as work in groups so that they can have economy of scale and bargaining power during sale.

Dennis Mapesa, from Nambale Sub County who has been a cotton farmer after inheriting it from his parents said he grew up with proceeds from Cotton sales from his parents but because of brokers, they stopped planting at some point due to poor harvest and poor pay.

“I have picked it up again after the government came with the goodies and the Ministry of Agriculture has continued to assist us in planting cotton,” said Mapesa.

He acknowledged that he has been planting the KSA81 M variety which has been doing well but with the introduction of other varieties which he has also tried, he noted that the government needs to guide them on the GAP since one of the varieties failed completely in his farm.

“This season, I have planted a variety called MAHYCO C 571 and I am trying it for the first time. It has some challenges but I think it is due to lack of proper sensitization and knowledge of the seed from the experts,” he said.

Mapesa thanked the national government for the Bottom Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA) plan that has resurrected cotton industries and also the need to add an industrial park to increase the cotton market.

“I want to thank the president and the ministry of agriculture for all they have done to ensure that they resurrect cotton farming in Busia county and the current market price for the cotton plant which has seen some of us getting Sh 200,000 out of one acre,” Mapesa said and encouraged other young farmers to join the venture.

Vincent Okumu, another farmer from Bwiri Farmers Society in Samia said the transformation in the cotton sector in the country is huge as recalls when growing up that his parents used to earn two pennies for I kg of Cotton

“I have farmed cotton since my parents started farming in the 1960s to the 1970s. I grew into it, but over time I saw it dwindle little by little in 2003 because of a lack of recognition and brokers but now the Government has given us power by bringing us the seeds needed for planting and it has also provided us with markets from Rivatex and Thika Cloth Mills,” he said

Cotton was introduced in Kenya about a century ago and it was then a very vibrant sub–sector positioning at the number three employer after TSC and civil service. The sector and crop started falling down as there were no structures in place like seed production, and the marketing was not well streamlined. It failed to produce for a country that had over 20 Ginneries operating on only four less than quarter facilities.

The Kenya Kwanza Government has invested in the sector and two weeks ago embarked on free distribution of cotton seeds and insecticides to farmers in Kisumu, Busia and Bungoma counties in efforts to revive the cotton industry

Courtesy ; K. N. A