THE SEASON THAT WASN’T

As a small-scale farmer, I can’t help but lament over the year’s failed

produce. I planted maize, but only ripped about 20% percent of the expected product, about 40% of peas, and equal measures of beans. The output barely reached market quality for all the crops, needless to say, I did everything right, from timely planting, weeding use of fertilizer, etc.

The maize cobs were small, the beans and peas pods produced were scarce per bean and pea plant, while the pods bore small seeds. Even then, I happened to be one of the few farmers who were lucky to have tasted my produce. Farmers are having it rough due to climate change.

The tragic farmers' story started when the August planting season began. Usually, we expected heavy rains around mid-August in these parts of the world and since, unfortunately, most small-scale farmers are not aware that the current climate change patterns have drastically affected weather patterns especially here in the Eastern part of Kenya, the farmers decided, after some scanty, showers to do their due diligence as good farmers do. They started preparing their pieces of land and sowing the seeds. The showers were few and far between and only lasted a fortnight. The crops had gotten a little bit of rain, enough to help with sprouting. Then the rains stopped. From late August through to November 2nd when there was significant rain falling. During August and October, we experienced high temperatures of up to 25.6°celsius (78.1° F) which was enough to kill the young plants by drying them out. Depressing!

At the onset of the November rains, some farmer’s replanted again with the hope that these rains would do well, it was pretty good, around 203mm 8 inches. I decided to plant my crops after about 3 days of what I thought was significant rain, just to be sure that this was a good time to plant, ignoring the weatherman telling us that this period is usually of short rains. Other farmers delayed about two weeks into the rain as they had to uproot the dried-up crops and replant again. Malaa, Machakos County, doesn’t play by the cards. It rained well over December and January and just some days into February. The maize we plant usually matures after 3 to 4 months so one would say that the rainfall was sufficient. After the rains died down, there was scorching sunshine with temperatures averaging 26.5° C (79.7°F). Somehow this, coupled with the type of soil (black cotton), was enough to stunt the growth of the crops. For most farmers, the maize had reached the budding stage, which requires water to propel the ‘fruits' to grow. Without water, the cobs stunted while most were never produced. The flowers dried, there was no pollen grain.

It is the season that wasn’t because most farmers suffered heavy losses. Calculating the cost of buying seeds, plowing, sowing (some did this process twice), fertilizer, weeding, pesticides, and top dressing, the harvest barely matched the investment. It’s now March, and according to the weather forecast, we are supposed to be expecting long rains starting mid-month through to May.

So far we are experiencing extreme temperatures of up to 32° C (89.6°F) which are doing further damage to the fruit trees and vegetables.

My family and I are seeing climate change happening right before us, we are feeling it, it is affecting farmers around us and their livelihoods, it will affect food security that's not a doubt. We need to plant more trees, reduce waste and turn to renewable energy if we hope to survive. We have already begun the initiative of repopulating the Eastern regions of Kenya with trees but we're counting on your support to propel the process further.