Arrowroots brings smile on farmer’s face

Joshua Otieno used to harvest between eight and 15 bags of rice from his two-acre farm in Ahero, Kisumu County, until two years ago when the produce started contracting.

The huge losses suffered every season hit him hard. He would spend at least Sh40,000 ploughing and buying farm inputs but the income was always disappointing.

Since he did not have a store for his produce, it meant that he had to sell his harvest within a week to avoid wastage.

And it is at this point that rice cartels used take advantage of him. A 90-kilogramme bag of paddy rice which retailed at Sh4,500 at the conventional market would only attract Sh2,000 from the middlemen.

This prompted him to abandon the farm for some time as he considered other crops. “I did not want to continue growing rice because of high expenses and meagre returns,” says the 35-year-old.

ARE RESISTANT

After consulting with area agricultural officers, Mr Otieno turned to arrowroots in 2011, particularly the eddoe variety.

According to the farmer, eddoe is widely grown in the area because it can tolerate excess water.

“I started with 7,000 seedlings which I bought at Sh3 each. I bought them from small-scale farmers in the area,” he says.

Once transplanted, the tubers take about six months to mature but it is recommended to start harvesting in the 10th month.

The harvesting can take up to three consecutive months. Currently, a medium sized tuber retails at Sh250.

According to Kenya Agricultural Research Institute senior researcher Dr Philip Lelei, farmers should embrace arrowroots because they are resistant to drought and many diseases and pests unlike rice, which is highly susceptible to diseases.

“The market has been very promising and I am considering doing large-scale farming now,” says Mr Otieno.

In a half-an-acre of land, the farmer harvested eight bags of arrowroots with each bag fetching him Sh6,000 in the local market.

Mr Otieno says he used Sh4,000 for farm inputs and labour.

According to Mr Otieno, the crop consumes a lot of water hence the reason it can be grown in rice field regions. “As you can see the farm is usually moist,” he told Money at his farm.

He says arrowroots can also be grown along riverbeds and marshlands where the soil is moist. Mr Otieno says that when the crop is ready, the leaves start changing colour and then shrink.

The farmer currently has about 30,000 arrow root seedlings which he sells to local farmers at Sh5 each.