Farming
The rural area of Kenya where Tembo-Kenya operates is largely devoted to small holdings and subsistence farming. Any large fields are given to maize, which provides the staple meal for ugali, like a polenta. Other farmers contract with Mumias Sugar, the largest company in Western Kenya, to plant sugar cane.
Those who do not have enough land will plant vegetables for their own use. It is common to see small plantings of maize or sukuma wiki (like a kale) on the shoulder of a public road.
Farmers use a lot of chemical fertilizer which seeps into the water table, adding to the contamination of the supply. The land grows "tired".
Tembo-Kenya has a number of initiatives on hand to help improve small farming practice and to provide food for families that sometimes only eat meat once a year, at Christmas:
- Fish farms: setting up ponds and buying fingerlings
- Keeping and breeding rabbits
- Keeping poultry
- Using a no-till approach to farming
- Starting tree nurseries, particularly cultivating "fertilizer trees"
Tembo-Kenya has a library of books written for Africa in simple English that provide instructions on setting up these projects. In addition, class instruction is organized with a Kenyan teacher to present the basics to groups in different communities.
