Lima, Peru
June 22, 2007
Potato farmers in Kenya increased
their potato production by 30 percent simply by using tubers
from selected healthy-looking plants as seed.
The beauty of the technology, known as positive selection, is
that it is easy to adopt by small scale farmers because it does
not require any cash investment, just some sticks and labour.
The International Potato
Center (CIP), the Kenya
Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and the
Ministry of Agriculture
of Kenya have trained over 100 extension agents and farmer
trainers. They in turn trained over 70 farmer groups involving
more than 1000 farmers since 2004. “The training was a real eye
opener, we never knew that most of our potato plants were sick,”
said Michael Macharia, an extension worker trained as a trainer
in May 2005. “This technology responds directly to the need of
our potato farmers because they have no access to clean seed.”
In Kenya, as well as in most developing countries, high quality
seed potatoes are not available to small scale farmers. There
are limited amounts of quality seed available for a few released
varieties, but it is expensive. For popular landraces no seed is
available. This makes farmers plant potatoes from their previous
crop infected with diseases, resulting in low yields.
Farmers groups are being trained on distinguishing between sick
and healthy plants by the trained extension staff. Healthy
looking plants are pegged before flowering and monitored till
harvest. Pegged plants are harvested one by one and a final seed
potato selection is made based on the number, size and quality
of the tubers. By repeating this process over a few seasons,
yields can be gradually increased. The farmer groups see this
for themselves because a field experiment compares their own
method with positive selection.
“I have done positive selection for three seasons […] and it has
doubled my yields,” said Wainaina Njoroge, a member of Pagima
group in the Naivasha division. “I expect to harvest 20 bags
from this quarter acre*. Fellow farmers are now coming to me to
buy seed as they have seen it is better than what they have.”
“My last crop looked so good that thieves came during the night
to harvest it,” said Peter Kinyae from the Kenya Agricultural
Research Institute in Tigoni. “Interestingly we have seen
several cases of theft from fields where groups had planted
positive selected seed. This is a good indicator that the
technology works.”
“The approach of teaching farmers positive selection is being
further investigated by CIP to judge its potential for solving
the seed problem in other developing countries,” said Peter
Gildemacher, a CIP potato specialist based in Nairobi. “Trials
with farmers are on-going in Ethiopia and Uganda, as well as
Peru and India and the technology is being promoted in
Mozambique and Malawi. We are also developing a set of training
materials from the experience in Kenya.”
The training material has now been published as a manual,
together with a shorter Farmer’s Field Aid that includes
photographs and short descriptions, meant to be used in the
field. The training manual** makes the positive selection
methodology available for use by development organizations
interested in improving the livelihoods of resource poor potato
farmers in developing countries. It can be adapted to local
circumstances in potato growing areas in Sub-Sahara Africa and
beyond. Because of the cost effectiveness of the training as
well as the easy adoption of the technology this program can
change the outlook of potato farming in areas where the
development of a specialized commercial seed potato industry is
still a long term dream to become reality.
*(approximately 22 tonnes per hectare) |
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