Enable 1500 Kenyan Rural Farmers for Agribusiness

INTRODUCTION

The Mango Tree Orphan Support Trust has been implementing agribusiness activities in communities with high rates of vulnerability caused by poverty and orphaned children as a result of HIV/AIDS for many years.
These activities are designed to help community members become more resilient by utilizing various agribusinesses.
TMT completed the following tasks during this reporting period:

a)     Plant a Forest Tree

Community afforestation: This initiative ensures that the impact of global warming and climate change is mitigated. TMT identified bare lands and transformed them into forests by planting forest and fruit trees. TMT works with communities to plant trees in community lands, schools, public institutions, and areas impacted by sand mining or where communities have cut trees due to charcoal burning. 5000 forest tree seedlings were distributed and planted with the help of school students in three primary schools and one chief camp during the reporting period. TMT continues to monitor the progress of such interventions, with the majority of forest trees establishing well.

Tree planting community awareness: TMT, together with other partners, has joined the fight against global warming and climate change, assisting the community in adopting clean energy and reducing CO₂ emissions to the environment. TMT has increased education and raised awareness in all community meetings about the dangers of human activities to the environment and the ultimate impact on human life. TMT has been encouraging families to dedicate at least a portion of their land to tree planting in order to improve the environment.

Raising seedlings: TMT continues to raise forest and fruit trees for distribution to farmers as well as planting in community lands in preparation for the arrival of long rains. As of the end of the quarter, 20856 forest tree seedlings and 4856 fruit tree seedlings had been raised and were ready for distribution.

Challenges and mitigation

The unpredictable distribution of rains makes it difficult to know when to plant trees, especially fruit trees like mangoes. To address this, the organization and schools collaborated by assigning at least three planted trees to each school pupil to care for, including watering and weeding until they were established.

b)    Apiculture

Beekeeping is one of the simplest and most profitable farming methods in the community. It is associated with lower production costs and a high value for food, but it requires harvesting skills. TMT has educated farmers over the years to adopt beekeeping as an alternative source of income and to improve their household nutrition value. TMT has been promoting bee domestication and adding value to the product by processing and packaging honey from farmers for sale.

Various farmers harvested and sold approximately 125 kg of pure quality honey, with another 120kg consumed at the household level for its medicinal value. To help the OVC even more, TMT has agreed with the farmers to set aside a portion of their profits for their children's education.

Conclusion

The document provides a review of environmental conservation activities, such as tree planting in schools, health facilities, and other public lands, as well as challenges and recommendations for the future. It has also investigated other community livelihood interventions that empower parents and guardians to care for their OVC. Bee and goat farming, as well as pawpaw planting, are examples of these.

TMT will focus more on monitoring the progress of planted trees and generating more fruit trees in preparation for the long rains in the coming quarter, as well as supporting the passing-on-a-gift to other farmers for the goats that have kidded.