Samburu residents urged to embrace poultry, arable farming

Samburu residents urged to embrace poultry, arable farming

Residents of Samburu County have been urged to embrace arable and poultry farming as alternative sources of income.

According to Albero della Vita, an agriculture specialist, the move will boost food security in the region and help alleviate poverty.

Speaking at the Pastoralist Food Festival event that was held at Lodung’ogwe Primary School in Samburu on Monday, Albero challenged the residents to embrace emerging forms of agriculture to boost food production.

He challenged the locals to enhance food security in the region, which has suffered from food shortages in the past years, through its programmes.

During the event, residents were taught on how to cook chapati from a mixture of sorghum and wheat and also the best method to cook chicken.

Moses Lekudere, a resident, said his community has been considering chicken as wild birds whose meat should not be eaten, thus shifting interest to cattle and goat meat.

Lekudere added that with 20 eggs, locals could get sugar, vegetables and tea leaves for their families noting that they were unaware of the benefits they could get from poultry farming.

“We realised overtime that other than taking chickens and eggs to the market, people are not utilising chicken and their products,” Daniel Leisagor said.

Leisagor encouraged residents to plant trees, practice poultry farming and utilise their products through school programmes like Young Pastoralist Farmer’s Field School.

He asked the community to embrace dry land farming to cultivate sweet potatoes, sorghum, green vegetables adding that the crops would do well in the area.

“We also encourage them to keep livestock as they also diversify by embracing bee and poultry keeping, all of which can do very well here,” he said.

Margaret Leseto, another resident, expressed her joy after the training session and promised to apply what she had learned.

“We have learned everything about sorghum in this training. We have always known about it but we did not know how to consume it. We have been taught on how to cook porridge, chapati and ugali from sorghum,” she said.

She further added that her community has not been investing in arable farming as they are used to livestock keeping, where they get their meat and milk.

Leseto also noted that she had learned about the health benefits of consuming vegetables as well learning how to prepare chicken.

Samburu East Education Officer, Kaunda Bontuye encouraged the residents to embrace new farming methods saying those who include vegetables in their diet have a chance of living longer than those who skip vegetables.

 

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Samburu poultry farming arable farming

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