Sage advice

Plant clinics are emerging as parallel support system for farmers in resource-strapped countries

- BOB KOIGI

PATIENCE KAZINGA, a retired teacher based in Makeuni county in the eastern region of Kenya, took up farming a decade ago, after she left the education sector. She grows kale, tomatoes, lettuce, onions and strawberries on her 3 hectare farm. In 2017, an unknown pest attacked her ripe tomatoes and completely destroyed the crop. "I had invested US $10,000 on the crop and had bagged orders from hotels and supermarkets. But the pest wiped out my ready-to-harvest crop within days. I tried to spray conventional chemicals but that only made the situation worse," Kazinga recalls.

A friend then recommended Kazinga to a "plant clinic" at the nearby market. The "doctors" at the clinic told her that the pest was Tuta absoluta, a species of moth known to feed exclusively on tomato plants. "I learnt cost-effective methods of containing the pest, and of keeping my farm and farm tools clean. These crucial lessons have saved my farm business,” she says.

Kazinga is one of the many farmers in Kenya who have benefitted from plant clinics, introduced by the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI), a UK-based non-profit that works on agricultural and environmental concerns in developing countries. The first plant clinic was set up in Bolivia in 2003, and since 2011, the non-profit has rolled out such clinics in 34 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas.