An agricultural expert from Nyamira has warned farmers in the county of continued poor yields if they do not embrace new technology.
Addressing farmers at Ritibo during an exhibition by Bayer’s Company on Tuesday, Timothy Ogato said the region has failed to adopt new farming techniques, making farmers lose millions of shillings annually.
Ogato said the poor yields that the region has been experiencing since 2012 can be controlled if farmers embraced new techniques by experts who had been deployed by the county government.
“New techniques of farming are required. We must be ready to embrace them because traditional ways of doing things no longer works. People are likely to continue experiencing the anomaly if they fail to work with agricultural experts,” Ogato said.
According to him, many farmers were still practising mixed farming repeatedly on the same piece of land, there exhausting nutrients hence low yields.
“You cannot plant maize and beans continually on the same piece of land. That deprives soils the essential nutrients making it difficult to maximise production,” he added.
He urged farmers to embrace rotational farming to restore the region’s ability to be among the top farming areas in the country and ruled out the presence of Rift Valley fever (RVF) that had allegedly infested the region leading to poor yields.
“Rotational farming is necessary because I don’t think the RVF still holds. We have done several testing and can affirm that the poor yields are as a result of poor farming methodologies,” he said.