Mola Mathina Self-help group benefit from orphan crops

Now, the members have resorted to growing orphaned crops like sorghum, green grams and cow peas. Their efforts have been largely boosted by extension services from the District Agricultural Office.

Benedict Mathitu is an extension Officer with Mutomo District Agricultural Office. Part of his duties includes offering extension services to farmers in the district. But for him to play this role, relevant information is needed.

Mathitu  is a beneficiary of Mutomo Maarifa Centre where he borrows books touching on Agriculture and climate change. This is how he came upon Farmers’ Seed Production (New approaches and practices), a book that has information on seed production and retrieval. One of the chapters was on Principles of Food Production. With this knowledge, Mr Mathitu was able to train the group on adopting orphaned crops (traditional high value crops (THVCS), a technology the group embraced.


The Ministry of Agriculture also supplied the group with gardam sorghum seed during last year’s short rains.Due to the poor rains the group members realized a small harvest and each member harvested at least a bag. This is a big boost to the members since fellow farmers who had cultivated maize realized no harvest at all. “Before, we used to plant maize a lot. Most of the times, we realized no harvest. But ever since we received training on embracing orphaned crops from the Ministry of Agriculture staff, we have seen change,” says Angeline Kalungu, the group’s secretary.

Future plans

Mrs. Kalungu says that the group now plans to embrace more orphaned crops seed variety like green grams, millet and cow peas in the future. “We see this as the first step towards achieving food security for our families and generally improve our livelihood,” she adds.

Message to ALIN

Mr. Mathitu praises ALIN for their library services citing that the Maarifa Centre has a lot of untapped wealth in terms of information. “I encourage fellow extension officers to exploit the information in the library as it is simple, easily understandable and applicable. There are many books on all subjects and farmers, teachers, business community and anybody interested in farming can also borrow simple ones that are well illustrated!” concludes Mathitu.