How Makueni farmer is using liquor bottles to fight hunger

Used liquor bottles are easily dismissed as an environmental eyesore. But to Charity Mueni, a peasant farmer at Kayata Village in Makueni County, they hold the key to food security.

The mother of two grows maize, mung beans, cow peas, pigeon peas, sorghum and assorted bean varieties hailed as highly nutritious on a three-acre parcel of land. She also grows cassava, sweet potatoes, oranges and bananas. She also keeps indigenous chicken, goats and fish.

“When one value chain fails due to harsh weather we turn to the others,” she said.

The mixed farming champion uses liquor bottles to preserve indigenous crops which she has established withstand climate shocks such as erratic rains, pests and diseases. The work starts with sourcing the seeds from aging farmers who have jealously preserved them over the years.

“Once we get the indigenous seeds, we multiply them in controlled plots. As this happens, we engage youth to collect used liquor bottles from local markets,” Mueni said. She has established a makeshift seed bank which has continued to attract agroecology champions to her home.

“Storing indigenous seeds in used liquor bottles cuts the need for using pesticides on them. They can last up to three years,” Mueni told a recent agroecology forum at Wote Town.

The workshop organised by Pelum, an umbrella organisation which brings together agroecology actors, culminated with Makueni County joining Murang'a and Vihiga counties in mainstreaming sustainable food systems through enacting an agroecology policy.

In Vihiga County, where the county government has assumed a leading role in promoting a return to agroforestry, crop rotation, intercropping, diversification, mixed farming, and organic fertilizers, agroecology champions bet on the practice to address food insecurity.

"We are witnessing an alarming trend in which food production has been declining. This is linked to the continuous use of synthetic fertilisers. They have made our soils acidic. They are also expensive,” said Mika Mukoko, a key agroecology champion in Western Kenya.

Under an unassuming shed at his homestead which is tucked behind Luanda Market, Mukoko spends long hours making a bespoke organic fertiliser using roasted bones which he collects from the market. The 79-year-old has also tapped his indigenous knowledge to boost food production by formulating bio-pesticides using the leaves of assorted herbs and shrubs.

"The answer to food security and biodiversity lies in organic inputs,” Mukoko said. Prof Alex Awiti, the principal scientist in charge of agroecology at the Centre for International Forestry Research -World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), has concurred with Mukoko. At the same time, Prof Awiti says agroecology holds the key to addressing global warming.

"The conventional model of agriculture which relies heavily on external inputs such as fertilizers, chemical herbicides and pesticides is unsustainable especially with tropical soils which have very strong bio-physical constraints in terms of their capacity to continuously produce and respond to fertilizers over time given the fact that our soils are some of the oldest and most weathered in the planet. They tend to have very low levels of soil organic carbon which is a critical component of soil structure that underwrites its capacity to absorb water, retain nutrients and release them back to the plants.

"Through continuous use of fertilizer our soils tend to get to a state called secondary acidification. This acidification further compromises their ability to respond to applied fertilizers. The agronomic efficiency of applied nutrients collapses. Without a consistent process of practices and production of bio inputs that add organic carbon back to the soil then we are getting very little return on fertiliser investment,” Prof Awiti said in the wake of a growing pressure on the government to rethink its subsidized fertiliser programme.