How Erratic Rainfall Patterns Adversely Affect Potato Farming in Kenya

Climate change has become a concern worldwide in the last few decades. Climatic changes, such as unreliable rainfall, have negatively affected people and plants in different ways and have dangerously impacted food production, thus endangering human survival on Earth and pushing animal and plant species to extinction.

Over the years, Potato farmers in Nakuru County have witnessed dwindling farm production due to erratic rainfall patterns, which experts attribute to climate change. This in itself threatens food security in Kenya.

Joseph Mwangi, a potato farmer in Njoro Nakuru county, has grown potatoes on his farm for commercial purposes for over ten years and attests that the vagaries of climate change have adversely affected his venture.

“Irregular rainfall has affected farming especially potatoes, for the ten years that I have been growing potatoes, rainfall pattern has been slowly becoming erratic, thus affecting the production. I used to produce one hundred bags of potatoes before but now I can barely harvest even fifty bags from the same piece of land,” Mwangi says.

Traditionally, farmers have depended on rainfall to support agriculture, but rain-fed agriculture has proven untenable as the years go by. Mwangi’s predicament is shared by Thairu Mbugua in Nyandarua County, 126 km away from Njoro. Thairu has been growing potatoes for over five years now and affirms that harsh times are affecting the potato farming that he has been depending upon for years.

“Unreliable rainfall has been playing tricks with us for the past few years, we use to time it very well for planting but now it’s difficult to do so because it’s never predictable,” Mbugua says.

This has affected not only farmers but also business people and traders who depend on potatoes. Wangare Maina, an eatery business lady running her chips business in Nakuru City, has experienced the effects of reduced potato production firsthand.

“The challenge that we have right now is the price of a sack of potatoes, it’s very expensive for us compared to the profit expected, and when you try to recoup it through reduced servings, the customers complain therefore the burden is left on our shoulders,” Wangare says as she turns the frying chips.

In the same city is Wanjiku Kimemia, a retail potato trader in Nakuru Wakulima market. The effects have not spared her either. The high wholesale prices and small size of potatoes have pushed her to the edge, eating into her profit.

“The wholesale prices are ridiculously high, and even the size of the potato has significantly reduced over the years; you try to pass the extra cost to the customers by increasing the retail prices, they complain and leave, so instead of losing your customers by passing the cost to them, you end up shouldering it hoping for a better future," she says as she attends to one of her customers.

Year after year, climate change has proven that rain-fed agriculture is becoming more difficult, so farmers need to embrace other forms of farming, like irrigation. Maurice Simiyu, an agricultural extension officer based in Njoro, advises farmers to embrace water harvesting and storage to beat the effects of climate change

“Farmers should come together in groups dig water dams to collect runoff water to be used in irrigation or sink boreholes to sustain them when the rain fails, this will greatly help otherwise if they continue depending on rainfall things will be tough for them,” Simiyu says.

The idea of harvesting rainwater for irrigation is slowly sinking into farm life. Joseph Mwangi has embraced this idea, saying that since he did, he has peace of mind and spends less on tap water bills.

“I have invested in several water tanks in my farm that store water for irrigation, now I am not afraid of dry spells and huge tap water bills eating into my income. I would advise my fellow farmers to embrace the same they should come together as group to cost share and make it affordable for everyone,” Mwangi says.

In Kenya, the drought situation remained critical in twenty of the 23 Arid and Semi-Arid Land counties in Kenya. This is attributable to four failed rain seasons coupled with the delayed onset of the October, November, and December 2022 rains in most parts of the Arid and Semi-Arid areas.

The impacts of the sustained drought situation have seen the number of people requiring humanitarian assistance stand at 4.35 million. Risks of Acute malnutrition continue to be reported in Arid and Semi-Arid areas counties where 942,000 cases of children aged 6-59 months and 134,000 cases of pregnant or lactating women acutely malnourished continue to access treatment.

This comes in the backdrop of a World Food Programme report on the global hunger crisis in 2022, which estimated that as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night. The number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared—from 135 million to 345 million—since 2019. 49 million people in 49 countries are teetering on the edge of famine.