海角大神

With less rain, farmers in Kenya quit food crops to cash in on legal drug

The government has struggled to come up with ways to make traditional farming more appealing as farmers in the north turn to growing miraa, a legal narcotic that needs little water and has a steady demand.

When Omar Kutara鈥檚 grandfather tended the family farm聽outside Marsabit, it was covered with fruit trees, and rows of barley and wheat waved in the wind. But today, the stiff branches of聽miraa聽plants cover a third of that space.

About two-thirds of Marsabit鈥檚 farmland is used for miraa, a plant chewed as a narcotic, according to Edin Ibrahim Yussuf, a local project coordinator with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which also does agricultural work. Miraa arrived from Ethiopia in the 1980s.

Years of water shortages have prompted farmers in this patch of northern Kenya, one of the only places in the arid region that can support agriculture, to abandon food crops in favor of聽miraa (known as khat in the Arab world).聽The hardy crop has flourished here.聽聽

While the government wants to curb miraa鈥檚 displacement of food crops, farmers welcome the steady income provided by the legal drug, used for stimulant and medicinal purposes. But the financial gain comes at a cost for the community: less local food in the markets and more聽miraa聽use among youth as it becomes more readily available.聽And with low rainfall levels believed to be the new normal, the trends are going to be hard to reverse.聽

Mr. Kutara, head of Marsabit鈥檚 Smallscale Farmers鈥� Forum, is unapologetic for giving up on the lush fruit trees that once grew here. He says they were not only suffering from drought, but repeatedly destroyed by elephants聽that roam freely in this part of the country. Light on labor and water, and left alone by the pests and animals that wreak havoc on other crops,聽miraa聽is considered a sure thing.聽

鈥淲e thought of something drought and wildlife cannot attack,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t brings in money. It can make our children go to school.鈥澛�

Kutara still harvests subsistence crops of maize, beans, vegetables, and grains, but many of the farmers he represents have devoted their land entirely to聽miraa.

鈥淭he market is always ready,鈥� Mr. Yussuf says. 鈥淓ven when the government tried to reduce or stop production, they couldn鈥檛. There is no alternative source of income the government can give farmers.鈥澛�

A bankable resource

Demand for the addictive leaf is consistent, as is the yield. Farmers plant聽miraa聽once, right after a rainfall, and then largely leave it alone. They can harvest six months later and continue to do so every few months, year-round. Sellers buy聽miraa聽from farmers for a little more than $3 a bundle, enough to last a chewer a day, and sell each for about $6.50. Kutara says that in a year, he makes about $1,975 from one acre of miraa.

In contrast, an acre of land can yield about 10 bags of maize in a year, each of which holds about 90 kilograms. With a kilogram selling for between 10 and 45 cents, the most a farmer can make off an acre is about $400, sometimes a bit more with other crops planted in between.聽

鈥淭he community demand is always there. People are always chewing,鈥� Yussuf says of Marsabit's miraa market, which remains largely local and unaffected by tumbling national demand.

The sale of the drug has also changed social dynamics in the community. Families have indisputably improved their lives on the back of the drug, particularly the women who do the bulk of the selling.

鈥淭hey have bank accounts. They are educating their kids. They have microfinance options 鈥� you see women building houses, women marrying younger men 鈥� anything she wants, she gets,鈥� Yussuf says. 鈥淪he can leave [her husband] and many have done that.鈥�

But there is the sinister side of it as well 鈥� climbing rates of youth chewing, plus the chewing of聽miraa聽to stave off hunger among those families not riding the聽miraa聽wave.

Promoting traditional farming聽

Marsabit used to export surplus food to nearby Moyale, Isiolo, and Wajir. Youssef Kure Mohamud, a shop owner in Korr, about 100 kilometers southwest of Marsabit, stocked his shop with produce from here. Now he sources from Meru, and some of the Marsabit traders are beginning to do that as well.

The government and organizations, like ILRI, are struggling to come up with ways to make traditional farming appealing.聽The government has given out subsidized seeds and loaned farmers machinery like tractors to encourage more food crops. It has also tried to bolster small businesses with microfinance loans.

But those interventions are fairly new.聽Pastoralists,聽herders who make up about three-quarters of the population,聽have received far more attention because of their dominance in the local economy.聽There was little money allocated for helping the farmers, Yussuf says.

But he believes that without a steadier, more plentiful supply of water, no intervention is going to prevent聽miraa聽from pushing out most other food production.聽

Drought has been battering Marsabit for decades 鈥� the first major one remembered by today鈥檚 farmers聽hit in 1973, when Kutara was in primary school. The next severe one came a decade later. Since the 1990s, they鈥檝e come more and more often.聽

Before the drought in 1973, Marsabit used to get an average of 750 to 800 millimeters of rain a year, Yussuf says. The last few years, rainfall has averaged 300 millimeters a year.

Marsabit County鈥檚 agricultural ministry does not keep annual records of the most of the harvests, including miraa, but Yussuf estimates grain yields have decreased by a bit more than half in the last 15 years.聽

Farmers and agricultural experts also place some of the blame on famine relief. The 1984 drought was devastating in northern Kenya. The population became almost entirely dependent on food aid, Yussuf says. It decreased demand and gave farmers little incentive to grow crops after the drought ended.

鈥淲hen you just dump grain 鈥� the entire infrastructure for food production suffers. This is what was going on in Marsabit for a long time. People have just more or less said 鈥楩orget maize production. We can鈥檛 compete with [Food for the Hungry, a famine relief organization]鈥� so they just grow a cash crop,鈥� says Paul Goldsmith, an agricultural researcher in Meru, Kenya鈥檚 main聽miraa聽producing region.

Some farmers in Meru have been convinced to intersperse聽miraa聽plants with food crops and trees. That so-called integrated system is far more resilient than Marsabit鈥檚 increasingly monocrop practices, Dr. Goldsmith says.聽

Kutara has heard all of the alternatives, and challenges anyone to find something that can help the farmers he represents the way聽miraa聽has, especially in the water-uncertain future.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a drug, but we are making our living off of this,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he desert is encroaching."