As the scarcity of land continues to bite in Kiambu, farmers in Limuru sub-county have been challenged to embrace hydroponics farming due to its cost effectiveness.
Speaking at a farmers’ field day in Ngecha on Thursday, the Limuru Sub-County Agricultural Officer Mary Mendi told farmers that they could venture into hydroponics farming, technology that will enable them grow plants without the use of soil.
She said that hydroponics vegetables including tomatoes grew 30-50 per cent faster, yielded about three times as much produce and used about 80 percent less water. She also urged farmers to embrace hydroponics fodder for feeding livestock as it was a more nutritious and cost effective alternative as compared to the usual feed concentrate and grains fed to livestock.
Mendi said that the fodder grew in seven days or less for chicken feed. She said that all that was required of a farmer were a few aluminium trays and/or plastic pipes on which to grow their plants, greenhouse polyethene, water and a structure with an average temperature of between 17- 24 degrees Celsius.
She said that a support material such as rice husks, cotton wool, sporangium moss, volcanic rocks or river sand was required to give support to the plants. The officer said that plants grown through hydroponics were much healthier as she explained that the main reason for the invention of this technology was mostly due to the impurities found in the soil thus affecting the quality of food crops grown.
“The soil we have is contaminated with chemicals from inorganic fertilizers and industrial waste which have contributed poor soil quality in most farm areas in Kenya,” she said.
She told the farmers that they needed not be afraid of taking the risk in hydroponics as it also required minimum use of space. She explained that one could practice what they refer to as vertical production whereby the trays were put on layers of shelves built vertically or on perpendicularly placed hollow pipes, both of which maximised on the use of space.
Mendi observed that among others, advantages of the technology was, improved quality of produce, increased production, shape utilisation, less input of financial resources and easy availability of raw materials.
In light of this, she asked farmers to grab the opportunity to practice improved farming methods which was going to positively effect on the profits made and thus improve their livelihoods.