A youth group in Nakuru will start a commercial farming project in March.
According to Stephen Karuga, the Secretary General of Mariakani Youth Group, the group has leased four acres of land in Engashura ready for a castor oil farming project that is expected to last for five years.
Karuga spoke at the group’s offices at Mariakani business centre, saying that the group members had been doing research on the internet, and had been consulting the local agricultural experts on production and export market of castor oil crop.
“We have been doing a lot of detailed reference on the internet and consulting agricultural experts. We first mooted the idea after reading an article in the seeds of Gold and observing how the plant grows spontaneously locally. We thought we could try venturing into this when rains start,’’ said Karuga.
Karuga added that the project would be monitored by experts from the Egerton University department of Horticulture and Crop Management, as well as the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Institute.
Karuga noted that the group was motivated by the fact that the plant that grew as naturally as an invasive fast breeding weed, its resistance to diseases and thusly means that it costs less in husbandry and required only a little weeding and pruning efforts in terms of maintenance.