Embrace urban Agriculture, Renowned Young Radio Journalist urges the youth.

Nicholas Omondi, tends to his chickens at his Victoria Eco Farm at Dunga area in Kisumu City.He urges the youth to embrace urban agriculture so as to help in providing food which the people staying within the urban set up need-Photos By James Keyi

By Dickson Odhiambo and Samuel Owida.

 October 3, 2017.

Embrace urban Agriculture, Renowned Young Radio Journalist urges the youth.

A visit to his home in Dunga area in Kisumu City ushers you to a new environment with birds of various types producing wonderful sounds.

As you enter his gate, the big sound of a dog barking might scare you a bit but you need not to worry at all by this.

This is the home of Mr. Nicholas Omondi who is a renowned Radio Presenter and the Director of the Victoria Eco Farm where he does the business of rearing locally improved chickens breeds as well as doing the hatching of fertilized eggs from the chickens he rears.

The most interesting part of it is the kind of ornamental birds he also rears and has brought the unique opulence within his compound.

Omondi currently works with Dala Fm, which is a radio Station that broadcasts in Luo language.    

             

He says he started by rearing dogs in 2008 but switched to the business of rearing poultry in the year 2011 when he bought an incubator for hatching 60 eggs which he bought at sh 18,000.

He adds that he was using this incubator to hatch eggs from only eight hens, adding that after a while he really became interested hatching the eggs from quails which were fetching good cash.

Omondi says the business went on so well that he ended up purchasing some 7 more hatcheries and 14,000 eggs could now be hatched after 21 days.

He says around 2012 December, the business of selling quail eggs started dwindling and he ventured into buying 300 chickens of improved local ones hence this improved tremendously.

“My hatcheries were now able to get more eggs to hatch and I could also keep the chickens,” he says.

He says business is very sustainable because the customers are very much available, adding that the hens lay eggs for about 18 months before the production started going down for two months then scales up again.

Omondi says most of his customers are the Agro vets within the region, Individual customers as well as the county Governments.

He sells a day old chick at shs 90, adding that this is a good price indeed.

Omondi Inspects one of the brooders he uses to hatch eggs from his poultry that he rears.

Omondi says he also buys fertilized eggs from other people who do not have hatcheries but are rearing locally improved breed of chickens, adding that he buys at shs 20 an egg.

He adds that he also sells fertilized eggs at shs 25 per egg.

He says he also sells the chickens to hotels and individual customers.

Apart from this, Omondi also rears some unique species of birds known as ornamental birds examples of those he rears are the Italian Silky birds, French Frizzled and Japanese Baitum.

He says that the members of the Asian community in Kisumu are his major customers for the ornamental birds, adding that a two month old ornamental bird costs shs 5,000.

He also rears Guinea fowls as well as turkeys together with geese, adding that he sells a Guinea fowl at shs 3,000 while a turkey goes for sh 4,500.

Omondi says he also operates a similar business at his rural home of Seme just within Kisumu County in a more sizeable land unlike the one he has in Dunga area, adding that the space he has at his Dunga area home where he does the business within Kisumu city is only about 0.05 acres.

  Some of the ornamental birds Omondi is rearing at his Victoria Eco Farm in Dunga Area     within Kisumu City.

“My poultry project in Dunga area stands on 0.05 acres but I am able to do a wonderful work and I am saying the space does not matter,  but what matters is what you can do in a particular limited place one has,” he adds.

Omondi says some of the challenges he has been facing emanates from power outages which sometimes affecting the hatching but he adds that he has a standby power generator which supplement power whenever there is a power outage.

He adds that when power outage arise, the hatcheries can stay without power for six hours, adding that after this it can be very risky for the eggs in the incubator if power outage persists.

On feeds, he says the locally improved chicken breed feeds on maize jam mixed, with rice as well as with Ochong’a and this is much cheaper as compared to those rearing pure grade layers and broilers which normally feed mainly on commercial feeds which is a bit expensive.

He says the youth in town should start in engaging in such a business even in a very small way to help them be engaged, adding that they should get small capital to jumpstart such a business even within plots they stay if there is even a little space in the urban set up.

Omondi says the youth should learn to be patient when they start an income generating activity, adding that patience pay a lot.

He says urban agriculture is the way to go because it has been realized that about 30 percent of the food within the towns and cities are produced as a result of urban agriculture.

                            Part of the Orange and Banana trees at Mixa farm in Nyamasaria area.

Meanwhile, in Nyamasaria Estate a long River Nyamasaria, a middle aged man, Mr. Charles has a multi sectoral farm Mixa Farm where he grows varieties of crops, fruits sugarcane, keeps a species of an insect known as cricket, poultry, a dairy unit and fabrication machines and strictly sell only finished products to his customers by ensuring that for all that he produces, value addition is a must to prevent the common cases where farmers sell their produce at throwaway prices or even dump the perishable ones.

Some of his finished products are ghee, yoghurt, sugar cane juice, lemon, paw paw and orange juices among others while his fabrication machine helps in making machines for cutting nappier grass, spinning groundnuts, and maize as well as making spare parts.

“Farmers lose a great deal when dealing with market forces when they operate at the mercy of the customers as well as the nature of some produce which are perishable,” he said.

Charles added that his one and half acre at Mixa  farm has all the varieties of crops and fruits as away to prove wrong the common lazy myth that certain crops do not thrive on certain soil in given ecological zones.

To sustain crop growing year round and to counter the weather vagaries in which rains respects  no season, Charles irrigates his farm using a water pump which helps him draw water from River Nyamasaria to supply water to the crops. To the contrast majority of the farms around Mixa Farm are dull in comparison with no expected sustainable harvests for the urban needs.

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