FARMKENYA INITIATIVE
Esther Kagai, an organic farmer and trainer on her Kiserian farm.
Peter Gicharu was a small boy in 1953 when he began farming. He was in a primary school near Mang’u, Kiambu County, and growing food crops in the school garden was part of practical lessons in agriculture.
Back then, Gicharu did not know that what he and the other pupils were practising was organic farming. He, however, remembers that they did not use any chemicals to enhance soil fertility or kill pests, but instead used compost material and mulching to grow food crops.
The former banker who retired in 1987 after 20 years in the financial industry is an organic farmer in Upper Matasia, near Ngong, still using similar methods he learned in school, close to 70 years ago. Making Biblical reference, Gicharu says this was the kind of agriculture that “God directed Adam and Eve to practise because He knew the benefits.”