Raising hope through dry land agriculture

Winfred Nthoki Nzomo, a 43-year-old mother of six could never imagine in her wildest dreams that one day she could pick green vegetables just outside her door.

For several years, the only option was a three-kilometre walk to a local market for vegetables. Getting vegetables was the second most challenging task that Winfred had to endure, after her tedious daily journey in search of water. 

Winfred’s wish was for a miracle to happen that would bring a source of water near her village. A miracle that would save her from a five-kilometre walk to the only shallow well where the entire village converged to draw water. This well, operated by hand, was the only source of water in her community, serving more than 15,000 people.

“Getting water nearby was the main thing we wanted,” Winfred says. “Growing vegetables within our homesteads was the last thing we could ever imagine.”

A member of the Nthunguni-Ivoleni water scheme harvests tomatoes in a greenhouse. Members use the water from the scheme, supported by World Vision, to water their crops. Photo by Kenneth Kibet

Rehabilitated borehole

This lack of access to clean water was the cruel reality that the people of Nthunguni, a remote village in Mtito Andei in Makueni County in Kenya, were undergoing a few years ago. But today, as the world celebrates World Water Day, not only can Winfred afford to sleep well past three o’clock, but her family can also enjoy a nutritious meal, thanks to a borehole rehabilitated by World Vision in her village in 2007.

Through good governance of the water scheme, the borehole provides adequate water for the community’s domestic needs, as well as for watering livestock and micro-agricultural activities such as kitchen gardens and greenhouse farming. The project has not only enabled locals to adopt new farming techniques, it has also provided an opportunity for them to try fish farming, a rare venture in the dry region.

“We no longer frequent the market to buy vegetables for our homes because we now have kitchen gardens,” Winfred says. “We grow all kinds of vegetables and our children are much healthier.”

Winfred is one of the thousands of people in the arid and semi-arid regions supported by World Vision projects that help people access water for domestic uses and support local communities achieve food.

World Vision is also working to enable communities to access clean drinking water and reduce incidences of water-borne diseases. We equally promote irrigated agriculture agro-pastoral activities to tackle household food security and livelihood resilience in the operational areas by promoting initiatives to address degradation of the natural resources and mitigate the effects of climate change. World Vision supports rainwater harvesting technologies in the areas in which we operate. 

The initiatives have enabled thousands of agro-pastoral communities to realise rare dreams, such as harvesting crops from their farms and providing adequate water to their livestock within short distances.

Food and other livelihood activities are always compromised by inadequate rainfall that does not sustain crops to maturity, and results in the loss of livestock for lack of water and pasture.

Reversing food insecurity 

In the dry Mwala region in eastern Kenya, an area that has been synonymous with food insecurity owing to persistent crop failure, the situation has been reversed thanks to a rainwater harvesting initiative by a group of 400 farmers supported by World Vision in Vyulya location. The groups were supported to construct and protect seven underground water reservoirs complete with a 10-kilometre pipeline extension to the farms where crops are irrigated. The groups were also supported to put up 19 greenhouses, where they grow vegetables such as green peppers and tomatoes.

A member of the Nthunguni-Ivoleni water scheme harvests tomatoes in a greenhouse. They use the water from the scheme, supported by World Vision, to water their crops. Photo by Kenneth Kibet. 

World Vision is keen to promote technologies that utilise minimal amounts of water to support crop life and has trained and supported farmers to adopt new agricultural techniques such as drip irrigation, and digging of the barkards and zaypits.

As a result, farmers dug and planted maize on 94,000 zaypits, which increased water harvesting, conservation, soil aeration and fertility, and reduced labour in land preparation. Farmers harvested more than 2,000 bags of maize from the zaypits alone. Each zaypit produced an average of two kilograms of maize.

The initiative is currently benefiting 15,000 people in the area with improved access to water and enhanced food security.

Besides rainwater harvesting and greenhouse farming, World Vision has also trained the farmer groups in other improved agricultural techniques, such as organic farming, seed bulking, establishing tree nurseries, marketing, value addition and post-harvest handling.

A similar initiative is supported by World Vision in Mukokodo location in Laikipia County and has attracted more than 80 pastoralists in an eight-kilometre stretch of land.

The initiatives have boosted both household food security and health, particularly that of children and pregnant mothers by providing them with access to green vegetables and other nutritious food.

It is for these gains that World Vision has teamed up with Kenya’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MOWI) to host this year’s World Water Day celebrations in Kenya. For the last week, the two partners have been running a media campaign on two leading local television stations in Kenya to promote awareness of the importance of the occasion. The national celebrations will be marked in the arid Isiolo County in the Upper Eastern region, where it will be graced by Girma Begashaw, World Vision Kenya National Director and Hon Charity Ngilu, the Minister for Water and Irrigation.