Transcript
Kadenge
When farmers find a plant with purple flowers growing in their maize, sorghum or millet crop, they know they could have a serious problem. Striga, or witchweed, may look colourful, but it is one of the most dangerous weeds affecting cereal crops in Africa. The Striga plant is a parasite: it lives by sucking the life out of other plants. Once a crop is infected, it grows poorly, and produces very little grain to harvest. In Nyanza district, in Western Kenya, farmers like Jacob Wanga get very angry when they lose their crop to this weed.
Wanga
Because of it, let this thing die an unnatural death!
Kadenge
His neighbour, Wilson Okumo, explains the effect of Striga on farming families...
Okumo
What we see here, crops that we see harvested from about 5 acres...
Kadenge
His wheelbarrow contains just one bag of maize - all he has managed to harvest from his five acre plot. Next, he opens his maize store.
Okumo
This is my store. But it's empty. We are just keeping scattered things here because there is no crop to be kept inside. Unless we buy from other lorries, then that is when we shall have enough food this time.
Kadenge
And it is Striga that has robbed him of his harvest.
Okumo
It makes the production to be low and low. So the problem we have is, how to eliminate it. What medicine can we use to kill all this, or what type of farming can we do to kill this. That is the major problem we have around here.
Kadenge
Striga is not a new problem, and much money has been spent on trying to fight the weed on large farms. But, until recently, there has not been a good way for smaller farmers to deal with the problem.
Now though, an answer may be possible...Jacob, Wilson and other farmers like them in Nyanza, could soon be part of a project to develop a simple and low-cost way to fight Striga, using a natural means of controlling the weed.
Kadenge
The bio-pesticide, as it is called, is being produced in the laboratories of the Real IPM company, in the Kenyan town of Thika. Up till now, the company has worked mostly with Kenya's large-scale vegetable and flower growers, helping them to fight the problem of pests. Now, the Real IPM company is going into partnership with NGOs, local community leaders and agro-input dealers, to help smallholder farmers.
Henry Wainwright is the director of the real IPM company. He explains how the Striga control will work.
Wainwright
This product, what we are calling Stop Striga, contains two processes. The first process involves soaking the seed overnight with a solution of nutrients. And secondly, in the morning, treating it with a fungus that will kill the Striga.
Kadenge
The fungus is contained in the pesticide, and it is this that is so deadly to the Striga. Striga plants produce many thousands of seeds, which germinate when they come into contact with the roots of cereal plants like maize. In the field, Henry explains that the fungus works by attacking these seeds the moment they germinate - killing them before they become a threat to the crop.
Wainwright
Each plant produces 20,000 of them. Our fungus attacks these seeds, that's how it controls it. So as the maize plant or the sorghum plant sends a chemical signal, and it stimulates those to germinate. And when they germinate, then that's when our treatment will control them, will kill them.
Kadenge
This technology for using a fungus to kill witchweed was actually developed almost twenty years ago, in the 1990s. Sadly, up to now it has not been turned into a commercial product that farmers can buy to protect their crops. Funding to get it into farmers' fields has come from the Research into Use programme, through an approach called Best Bets.
The bio-pesticide is now being tested in field trials run by the Kenyan authorities. If it passes the trials, small packs of the pesticide will be developed, and these will be promoted to around 50,000 farmers in Western Kenya. The Best Bets funding will also pay for three seasons of planting by the farmers, as well as many promotional and training activities.
Farmers will be trained and employed to promote the technology in their villages. Collins Wanyama, of the Real IPM company explains how it is likely to work:
Wanyama
In our thinking, the best approach would be through village promoters, if we can come up with some people that we train and then build them up and send them out to disseminate the information. When it comes to the treatment itself as well, we will need them. The product itself may not be distributed by the village promoters, but it may be distributed by the agrovets, which are available, and where the farmers can access the information. Although the village promoters will have to talk to the farmers to tell them the product is available in the agrovets, to make it have a smooth flow of information.
Kadenge
Wanyama is hopeful that through the combination of soaking the seed overnight, and treating it with the Stop Striga bio-pesticide, farmers will be able to increase their maize yield by up to 6 or 7 bags on a one acre plot. Jacob Wanga is certainly excited that a solution to Striga could be on the horizon.
Wanga
I would like, if I could get those who are against it, as I am, we can fight it. Get me a bomb to bomb it! End of track
