By Nicholas Anyuor
For Jescah Omamo, â tea manureâ is like gold. It transforms her farm as she watches, a sight that is pleasing to her eyes and pocket.
Before she discovered this farming, she spent so much money to buy fertiliser and other artificial Farmers and officials stand next to a compost. Farmers say their farm produce has increased many times due to use of the organic fertilisers. [Photo: Nicholas Anyuor/Standard]
inputs to grow crops and this always left her with a hollow pocket and unhappiness.
She had reached a point where she was unable to afford the chemical fertilisers and pesticides for her two-acre farm in Umin village, East Uholo, Siaya County.
Moreover, she says, the chemicals and pesticides are harmful to human health.
Indeed after spraying vegetables, at least two days have to pass before they are harvested for consumption because the fertilisers and pesticides are harmful to human health.
Bumper harvest
In Got Osimbo and Uluthe villages in Ugenya, farmers who were discouraged from chemical fertilisers because of the dangers associated to them and expense of chemicals no longer visit nearby shops to buy the products. In fact, the shop owners no longer stock the artificial fertilisers in their shops.
The farmers have turned to their backyards where they have made heaps of manure.
"We have animal waste in our homes and this is what we use to make the manure. We have really succeeded in this and are having bumper harvests every season," says Omamo, 47.
The farmers have already formed ten groups to champion the organic farming in the region, a move that has attracted many stakeholders, locally and internationally, with Rotarians from Colorado, US, promising to drill water points for irrigation for the farmers.
