Forestry Training & Finance for 800 Farms in Kenya

INTRODUCTION

Drylands Natural Resources Centre (DNRC) wish to share with us the new year’s greetings hoping that the year 2025 is off to a great start. During the reporting quarter, DNRC continued pursuing her main objectives of economic development, community regeneration and environmental regeneration. All DNRC activities are geared towards achieving these main objectives including this project of forestry training and financing report. During the reporting quarter and as part of fulfilling the objectives, DNRC continued to sensitize, mobilize and train both newly recruited farmers as well as training already existing DNRC farmers on importance of tree growing especially climate mitigation whose effects are being felt everywhere. The trainings went on concurrently with farmer’s farm hole preparations for tree planting in readiness for tree planting during November-December 2024 rains.Since this project has been running for quite sometime, the older trees continue to mature and farmers continue to get early benefits ranging from firewood, fruits, and non timber products like moringa dried leaves and moring oil which they sell for income.In terms of ecosystem services,the community continue to enjoy microclimate leading to conducive climate for crop growing, soil erosion prevention, regulating service and provisioning services. Particularly for this project, the following activities took place successfully:Training and outreach where farmers were trained on drylands hole preparations,  maintenance of the diverse seedlings in the nursery, issuance of the diverse seedlings to both farmers and schools working with DNRC, coordinating and planning for end of year farmers get together.Below are detailed activities during the reporting quarter.

DNRC TREE NURSERY

During this reporting period, DNRC tree nursery personnel were actively involved in the following activities: propagation of 67,000 diverse tree seedlings and maintenance of the same. The seedlings in the nursery were mainly Avocado, Moringa, pawpaw, senna siemea, gravelia, citrus,mangoes, Acacia Mellifera, Acacia Senegal, Acacia polycatha, Luceana, Balanites, cypress, sonna apple, melia vonkensii, passion, Eucalyptus camandulenses, casurina among others.Other activities included watering, weeding, root pruning and disease and pest controls They were also involved in issuance of the trees seedlings both to the farmers and the larger community where a total  of 67636 diverse seedlings were issued during November-December 2024 rains.

DNRC TRAINING AND OUTREACH PROGRAM

 During the reporting quarter, DNRC outreach personnel were busy mobilizing, sensitizing and training farmers on environmental issues as they get ready to plant trees immediately November-December 2024 the rains start.  They were also involved in doing individual farmer follow-ups in their farms to a certain if the farms are ready for planting more seedlings. The department was planning for the end of year farmers get together which involves preparing and testing Kamba traditional foods, dancing Kamba traditional music as farmers celebrate together and review yearly achievements and planning.The outreach department was also actively involved in coordination of the tree issuance activity for both farmers and schools to make sure they all got their seedlings on time for planting.

CHALLENGES

•  Transport – since DNRC has limited transport (one pick up truck) it takes time to deliver seedlings to the farmer’s farms.
•  Diseases: Seedlings like eucalyptus, Senna siemea were slightly affected by blight .
•  Inadequate rains: This rainy season was below normal 

FOCUS FOR NEXT QUARTER

•  Continue  individual farmer follow ups and farmers training.
•  Propagate more seedlings to meet the years (2025) target of 100,000 seedlings
•  Continue training farmers on different aspects of agro ecology and trees.