The mighty Kenyan long distance runners and agroforestry

One of the most famous runners ever is using an agroforestry system on his farm.

Today we visited the Cherangany district accompanied by divisional head Francis Munene. This district produced the best middle and long distance runners the world has ever seen, for example Edith Masai, Lorna Kiplagat, Moses Kiptanui, Paul Ereng and others. This area was almost totally clear of trees 15 years ago. Take a look at the pictures and compare the right side of the road with the left side. To the right there is an agroforestry plantation and to the left maize. Probably a good comparison to how the whole terrain looked in the past.

We had the possibility to visit Mr Moses Kiptanuis farm. Unfortunately Moses was not home. But his two small kids and the manager showed us around the farm. They use agroforestry in very successful way. The manager said that Moses is very satisfied with the farm using agroforestry along the guidelines of the Vi-skogen project.
The Kiptanuis farm have crops as tomatoes, maize, sukimavike and fruits as bananas, avocado and passion. The tree species was grevelia, eucalyptus, sespania and more. They also keep cattle and a big plant nursery with a lot of different species. The coming summer VI-skogen in cooperation with the farm will organize a day of forestry and agriculture.

We also passed Paul Erengs farm. We talked to his manager because Ereng work as a running coach in USA. This farm hasn’t started using agroforestry – yet, but Francis promote agroforestry and hopes that this farm will start using a more modern and profitable system in the future.

The last visit for the day were to a running camp organized by Josef Chebet, double Boston marathon winner. There we met Kenyas coming runners; Lorna Kiplagats younger brother Look, eighteen years old and with a personal record on half marathon at 64 minutes.
I was asked by the young runners to arrange their partition in Stockholm Marathon. The deal was to sponsor the trip and and get 15% of the prize money after the costs for flight and accommodation has been deducted. An interesting investment proposal with a touch of gamble.

It is quite easy to understand why these guys are so good in running. They live on an altitude of 2000 meters and practice up to 3500 meters two times every day except Sundays. There are other explanations but altitude and daly practice is what gives them the cutting edge.

More pictures here.

 

Rainforest exploatation

Today we visited a small sawmill who sells timber. A large part of the timber comes from trees which are strictly forbidden to cut, for example mahogany, rosewood and such. The general prizes are low compared to world market prizes and very low considering the quality of the wood.

The mahogany is imported from rain forests in Kongo where they now probably cut larger areas with untouched rain forest than in any other part of the world. Here in Kenya it is unfortunately no risks involved in dealing with illegal timber. Corruption among officials is considered to be widely spread and retrieving necessary documents is rarely a problem for the ones who can afford the hush money.

Vi-skogens project manager, Björn Horvath found rosewood (Hagenia abyssinica) on the sawmill. Rosewood is illegally logged in the area around Kitale.
Björn stresses the importance of giving support to farmers which have planted for example Elgon teak, so they can harvest these more exclusive trees to substitute rainforest timber. There must be a functioning legal market – otherwise no farmers will plant trees in the future.

Recently an Ugandan newspaper printed an article on the subject of the Mabiran rain forest which covers an area of approximately 7000 ha. The governments is requesting the Ministry of Land and Agriculture to provide alternative areas to be gazetted as forest reserves, in exchange for the Mabira forest which will be given to the Suger cooperation of Uganda Limited.
If the government gives the sugar company the forest area to plant sugar canes, there will never be rain forest there again, species of animals and plants will die and the lack of forest will affect the water condition in the whole area.

A natural forest can never be substituted.

Pictures of indigenous wood

Some research and fieldwork pictures.

 

Vi-skogen till idag, Vi-skogen up to today

In 1983 the first project of the Vi-skogen agroforestry program started up in West Pokot. It’s aim was to stop the desert spread. The he next project started up in the district of Trans Nzoja south from Poket in the western part of Kenya in 1986.
Today the focus is on building up the agroforestry system which means that farmers plant crops together with trees. This system will improve the soil and the economy for the farmers.

20 years later we can see that the project is a success. Agroforestry farms are much more productive than for example maize farms. All farms have during this time produced crops and fire wood. The coming years will also see the harvest of the first generation timber trees. Agroforestry farms has a program in which plants at least two new trees for every harvested one. The planting and silviculture programs are already performing very well and will continue to deliver as the Vi-skogen project spreads and further its organization.

The key when it comes to all sorts of forestry is to balance the harvest level to the level of the growth. It is crucial to Vi-skogen to keep planting at least two new trees for every tree they harvest. If the program works according to plan it will also further the general soil sustainability and protect from erosion due to sun and rain.

The next step as I see it, is to educate farmers and workers in calculating timber and how work with chainsaw in a secure and professional manner. One task in the future could be a larger educating program in the use of chainsaw. Today many workers are using chainsaw with only ordinary shoes and trousers with out helmet.

I can see Swedish chainsaw license be introduced in Kenya in the future. It must should introduced – otherwise the harvesting will injure and even kill people and in the end possibly harming the overall development of the young Kenyan agroforestry industry.

TimberBusiness woman, Beatrice Okwakau with her chainsaw. No safety clothes.
Chain saw instructor Magnus Hakeman. Safety clothes.

 More images / Fler bilder

 

Business Woman of Kenyan agroforestry – Oranga sågar utan skydd

We have had the pleasure of meeting Beatrice Okwakau, business woman in timber and a farm owner. In order to start listing market prices of timber we gather information on prices on different tree species. Mrs Okwaku is a cunning business woman and the prices we got are quite low. It seems like the timber market in Kenya look pretty much like back when Dickson ruled the infamous estate Baggböle in Sweden.

You can see on the pictures below wich chainsaw is used and popular.

Manual labour with chainsaw in Kenya means a minimum of security. When it comes to security I have seen horrible things. The working people in Kenya are not equipped with safety gear at all. When using the saw they work in shorts and sandals. This could mean opportunities for Swedish instructors to develop the safety standards.

 

Tree estimation in Kenya – Inventering av skog i Kenya

Our research took us back to Jane Charles farm in Kiminini again. Today the aim of the research was to estimate the volume of the different tree species. The previous day was a research of how many labour intensive their agroforestry plantation is. The data is needed to do the net present value calculation.

Tree estimation is more about to help the farmers to set up a price list. Today a rougher guestimate guides the price when you do forest business in Kenya: big tree, medium tree and small tree and so forth. We collected height, diameter in breast height and then used a Swedish forest calculation program. In Kenya it will be a wile before a set price lists, forest guidelines and thinning guides. We hope our work here constitutes a good start.

To our help we had Anne Cheruto, divisional head in Kiminini and Judith who works as a volunteer at Vi-skogen in Kitale.

A Swedish Forrest Engineer in action / En svensk skogsmästare i arbete

 

Bilder från Kenya

Vi har lagt upp nya bildserier från Kenya, bland annat från Olof Palme Agroforestry Centre. Vi återkommer under helgen när det finns tid att skriva och tillgång till uppkoppling med mer texter om skogsbruk i Kenya.

Bilderna finns på skogsutbildarnas fotosida på Flickr.

 

Report 3, Research

The first day of research took place in the Kiminini district about 15 km from Kitale. We visited the Jane and Charles farm located close to Kiminini.
To our aid we have a guide from Vi-skogen, Judith. The purpose of the research is to produce a net present value analyze of the farms in the study.

Jane and Charles started their agroforestry farm in 1988. Before that they where maize farmers.
The farm produces firewood, rows of Sespania and Caliandraand are planted between the vegetable fields and on available land. Further more there are timber trees as Grevilia, Cypress and Mkomari.
Major vegetables for this farm are potatoes, cassava and maize. Important fruits are avocado and bananas.

As far as we have understood, the farm gives relatively good income. One example is that they have planted cypresses 1988 to a total costs for planting and weeding, approximately 100 (=10 Sek) Kenyan shilling (Ksh) per tree. 1996 they harvested some of the trees and the income per tree was circa 8000 Ksh. From a foresters point of view that is a sound economic outcome, better than planting trees in Sweden.
We will include more details on the economy of Kenyan agroforestry in the final report of the study.

In Kiminini we saw this sign. We recommend the Husqvarna company, if they read this, to buy trees from Vi-skogen as Christmas gifts to their associates. This will further the goals of the Vi-forest project – better living conditions and increased soil quality.

The farmer, Jane showing us around the farm.

The Brits has introduced the Kenyan people to British bureaucracy, English cosine and of course – cricket. But we´ll skip the history of the British wazunga (white man) for now.

 

Report 2, Kiminini

Report from Kitale.
Today is a research planning day.

Yesterday we visited agroforestry farmers in the Kiminini area, located around 10 km from Kitale. The farms avaerage on 3 ha of land. They produce coffee, avocado, maize, bananas as head enterprise of the farm.

One of the farms has a plant nursery who produces around 30 000 seedlings. The major problem is the water. They need around 400 l per day to continue produce these seedlings. To get the water they need to take it from the river 10 km far away. The well previously used is now dry and will be for the nearest weeks.

One of the farmers we visited is famous among agroforestry farmers in the area. His farm was very impressive and produced timber, firewood, honey, bananas, maize, milk and he even have two very big pigs. He can also make money as a agroforestry teacher for other farmers and even take a small fee when people visit his farm. He told us that agroforestry had changed his life from a poor maize farmer to a prosperous man who can by food every day and pay his children’s school.

From what I have seen so far I can conclude that agroforestry is a successful production system. When I have compared fields with maize and agroforestry field, there is a big difference. Agroforsestry farms are greener and seem to have a better soil condition.

There is another project going on in Kitale comparing soil in different production systems. We hope that the reports from the two projects will make it easier to argue the benefit of agroforestry.

Mer bilder

 

Report 1, Arrival in Kitale, Kenya

Vi Agroforestry Center in Kitale.

We have now arrived in Kitale where the project will take place. Before we started the project we have done a small job in Nairobi. The task was to revise an orienteering map in Uhuru Park, Park of Liberty) in central Nairobi. To make it at all possible we were assisted by Kenyan orienteer, Daniel Kenney, and with his help we managed to find our way around the park. The job was commissioned from a teacher, Lars Andersson in the Swedish orienteering school in Olofström, Sweden.

After mission complete, we meet up with Björn Horvath the Kitale agroforestry project-leader. Driving from Nairobi to Kitale was a new experience. The distance is 400 km and it took us about 8 hours on the biggest highway in Kenya. Sometimes the road was in worse condition than Swedish forest roads. After only one day we have realized that things are different in Kenya and Sweden.

Our first day in the forest closest to Kitale was also a new experience. We have seen a tree which contains about 100 m3 of wood. With kind aid of a Land Rover we have ventured in to the Mount Elgon national park up to 3300 meters over sea level and a wonderful view over the Kitale area. We have already seen lots of new trees and other species. We also went into a cave where elephants lick salt from the walls. Unfortunately we did not see too many animals. We saw some monkeys and water backs and of course bats in the cave.

Tomorrow the project will start up with an introduction from Björn Horvath.

More pictures

 

Agroforestry project in Kenya

In Mars and April 2007 two forest engineers from Skogsmästarskolan, Magnus Hakeman and Viktoria Woxlin are going to be in Kitale, Kenya on a research project to compare the economics of traditional maize cultivation and agro forestry.

The project is done in cooperation between SLU in Sweden and Vi-skogen in Kenya.
Since the eighties Vi-skogen has, together with local farm workers been using the method of agroforestry, with perennial several layer cultivations, in order to replace traditional mono agriculture The aim of agroforestry is to reduce soil erosion and to induce economic improvement.
The definition of agroforestry is: Trees and crops cultivated together with animals (e.g. bees) to maximise the soils long-term production capacity. The good thing with an effective agroforestry system is the several layer methods. Trees do not have to be nitrogen binding, but many times they are.
Most important when to choose which trees to cultivate is the need of the farmer (soil improvement, fodder, building, wood etc.) in the same time as the chosen tree should not affect the other crops in a negative way.
Nitrogen binding trees are common in Africa. Nitrogen is tied through bacterial in the root system and becomes natural manure for growths.
Shadows from the trees protect the soil from dehydration. The trees also help to keep the wind out which increases the growth.
Some of the trees that are used in agroforestry release a lot of organic material like knots, leafs, bark, fruits and roots. That contributes to more fertile soils. Trees also draw up minerals from the ground that favours the crops. These are some of the advantages of using methods like agroforestry. In the long term, the system is expected to lead to positive social improvements.
Objective
The objective of this project is to economically compare agroforestry cultivation, on a farm in the Vi-forest project area, and a farm with traditional cultivation of corn in the same area.

We will publish weekly reports during the visit to Kenya.