The Sustainability of Agriculture

Agriculture is the most important activity on this planet as far as survival is concerned and recent reports have attributed most greenhouse gas emissions to Ag given ‘Approximately 37,000,000 hectares (91,000,000 acres) worldwide are now farmed organically, representing approximately 1% of total world farmland (2009) (see Willer/Kilcher 2011)’ Wikipedia. The rest 99% use toxic chemicalsmanufactured from oil, natural gas and God-knows-what else in the guise of herbicides, insecticides, growth hormones leading to cancer, allergies, sterility, infertility, insanity, vanity I tell you!

Hydroponics, Aquaponics and Aeroponics

Climate change is a reality. At independence in 1963, Kenya’s forest cover was 10% of it’s land mass but now it’s a greasly 1.2% due to massive deforestation. This has had a huge effect in terms of our water tower and subsequently food security. Apart from the micro climate change, the globe as a whole is pumping out greenhouse gases that are significantly shifting climate and weather patterns all over the world.

The Agriculture Investment Case

Agriculture in Kenya is not usually thought of as an investment but as an occupation of the rural folk mostly the old. Many youths from rural and urban backgrounds shun this way of life and opt to flock the city to look for white collar jobs which are not there. Furthermore, our universities and places of higher education do not promote agriculture, instead they prepare students to be job seeker and not job creators.

The State of the State

Kenya is a food insecure country, we import over half of our food mostly  from our food secure neighbours which leaves us to question our priorities as a republic. Currently we are suffering a huge shortage of grains like maize, rice, wheat etc  forcing us to import expensive food from Tanzania, Malawi, South Africa etc

Reasons for this are