Moringa to support Kenyan farmers health & wealth

Introduction

Once again receive much greetings from DNRC family. We are happy to share with you our moringa project progress report. In the recent past, Market for Moringa product has been growing as people become aware of the huge health benefits of it. DNRC has been promoting moringa among other over 25 tree species as part of biodiversity conservation. Now the farmers are reaping both health and wealth benefits of Moringa through domestic use and sell of extra for income. We are selling both moringa leave powder and seeds. DNRC continue to promote planting, processing and marketing moringa products working with 600 smallholder farmers and 6 schools with over 1500 students. During the quarter, the main activities achieved where mainly moringa tree propagation and farmers trainings on hole preparation to plant more moringa trees. Below are the detailed activities taken during the quarter.

Propagation of moringa seedlings.

During the quarter, we continued to propagate more moringa seedlings to be issued to the 600 plus farmers and the 6 schools we work with. This quarter we propagated 2500 moringa seedlings making the accumulative propagated seedling to be planted this year to 4500. This seedlings continue to be maintained in the nursery and getting them ready for issuance to the farmers and schools during November-December rains. (See attached pictures).

Outreach and trainings.

During the 3 months period, DNRC outreach personnel was busy visiting and training farmers on their farms and also the schools. They trained mainly hole Preparations and maintenance of the existing moringa trees. Also farmers were able to harvest and bring moringa seeds at DNRC for packaging and sale. Another Key activity during the quarter was recruiting more farmers. During this period, 40 new farmers were recruited to join the 600 farmers working on this project.

Challenges

Water scarcity was our main challenge during the quarter because DNRC doesn’t have permanent water source. The last rains were not enough and thus water shortage during the quarter was a big challenge because the nearby seasonal river dried up and were relying on a 5 km surface dam. We use donkeys to fetch the water so this is a long distance to make many trips.

Focus for the next quarter.

• Finalise hole digging by the farmers for moringa tree expansion
• Issuing the moringa seedlings to the farmers to plant during the November-December rains
• Moringa seed propagation and maintenance