By Gilbert Arap Bor
It is common knowledge that without fertiliser, crops will not do well. Farmers in Kenya use four main types of fertiliser: DAP, CAN, Urea and NPK.
Just as children need healthy diets to flourish, plants require special nutrients to produce high yields. Kenya is in the middle of buying fertiliser for the next season.
Though maize is the primary crop in Kenya, farmers’ demand for fertiliser is not comparable to that of plantation crop owners – coffee, tea, sugarcane.
This is because maize farmers are largely smallholder and tend to use a much lower proportion of the recommended fertiliser quantities. Demand for fertiliser by maize farmers is also influenced by the timing of the planting season.
A majority of farmers will buy the input just before or on the onset of the rains. Unfortunately, that is the period it is very expensive.
Consequently, they do not use enough fertiliser, with many hardly using any. Expensive fertiliser leads to lower use of the manure. Read more…
