Moringa to support Kenyan farmers health & wealth

Introduction

We hope this report finds all of us well, we are happy to share with you our progress report for the first quarter this year on Moringa to support Kenyan farmers healthy and wealth. As moringa tree continues to be popular, the need to use it is rapidly increasing across the world and many people are getting to know how the leaves can be used as a nutritional supplement. This has informed many farmers to plant moringa trees to benefit from both the leaves and also the seeds as they also sale them for industrial oil pressing. The 800 farmers partnering with DNRC continue to plant moringa as one of the agroforestry tree and they continue to enjoy tremendous benefits on the same. Apart from both the nutritional value and income farmers get from moringa tree, it also plays a big role in environmental generation mostly soil building as many moringa trees do well when planted along the swales or terraces in the main farm since it has not shown any effect on the crops. So a famer doesn’t need extra land to plant moringa tree.

During the reporting period, the following activities took place: doing follow ups both on farmers and the 12 schools we work with, processing moringa powder as well as collecting moringa seeds from the farmers.

Below are detailed activities during the reporting quarter:

Moringa powder processing and collecting seeds

During the reporting quarter, we processed 20 kgs of Moringa powder which was supplied to respective orders.We also managed to deliver the order of 1000kgs of moringa seeds to the international order and we continue to collect more as we wait for the next order.

Follow ups on the farmer’s farms and schools

During the reporting quarter, the outreach personnel was busy doing follow ups mostly with the newly recruited farmers to see how their moringa trees are coming up and training them how to manage them for optimum production.

Challenges

• Drying moringa leaves for powder during the rainy season has been a challenge.

Focus for the next quarter

• Continue drying more moringa leaves for the powder
• Continue sourcing more moringa seeds
• Do follow ups on management of the moringa trees with farmers.