The holidays are gone and I am back to the city from my home village. I come from a very remote village in Central Kenya called Bush, where I was the first and still the only female graduate. I am regarded the most bright and fortunate lady and therefore expected to know everything written in books and have as much money as everyone would require.

 As usual, am expected to dish out “Christmas” gifts to women, who will often visit home to say hello to me and to children, who will nickname me “Auntie”, a costly name indeed. However, these are not the only expectations; as a holder of a basic degree in forestry, I am expected to know everything about trees and especially exotic tree species.  

One evening, a neighbour visits home. She has a small plantation of cypress (Cuppressus Lusitanica) on her farm, which has had retarded growth in the past several years. She is not the only one, as a second neighbour approaches me because his “South African” eucalyptus plantation, which he was told would be mature in 10 years since the time of planting, is not doing well. He may not reap the profits as promised. Others want to know what crops and trees they could plant in order to reap bounty harvests and market without hitches.

I take a walk to the cypress plantation; the trees were planted using the same spacing as potatoes, which is the most common crop in the area. No pruning was done either. I therefore advise her to prune and thin the plantation, which she expects to sell later for timber.  To the Eucalyptus plantation farmer, I also advise him to space his trees as they were less than a meter apart. The plantation is actually a mixture of E.saligna, E.grandis and E. campanulata. It then got me thinking; “from where did the two farmers obtain information before investing in their plantations if they ever did? If not, from where were they expected to obtain advice? The best answer could be; “they are supposed to obtain advice from forest extension officers but most probably they obtain it from seedling dealers”. The problem was simply misinformation.

The two farmers in my village are a reflection of the scanty information accessible to the very people who are the reason for research and the reason for this congress. It is also a reflection of how much farmers are willing to invest in agroforestry, with the hope of returns on investment. I therefore feel obliged to not only conduct research on trees but also address the issue of research communication. Communication challenges are often taken advantage of by middlemen and companies, which dictate prices to farmers, buy their products at throw away prices and fail to provide correct information.

What could be done?

To ensure increased and diverse access to information, I imagined of a communication tool or system that matches  tree species with sites and management options, simple enough to be understood and used by semi-illiterate persons, and flexible enough to provide diverse information as well as get updated with the most recent information on trees. This tool could also be linked to potential markets for products, thus minimizing the impacts of middlemen. Such a tool could work a great deal to lift the lives of my village folks and others around the globe in such scotching poverty. As Pablo Picasso said, “Everything you can imagine is real”; I therefore believe this could become a reality too.

Photo: Kenyan farmer and extension officer inspect tree nursery

Blogpost by Caroline Gathoni (Nairobi/Kenya) – cgmumbi(at)gmail.com
Photo by Peter Casier/CCAFS