Baling hay helping drought-hit Kenyan pastoralists to cut their losses

ALAGO ALBA, Kenya: Usually at this time of the year, Ibrahim Hassan would be preparing his livestock for a lengthy trek towards greener pastures along the River Tana, about 100km away from his village in Dertu, northern Kenya.

Like many here, Hassan knows his livestock will die if he does not move the herd ahead of the looming dry season, which hits between the months of January and March.

But this year the 58-year-old has decided not to move. His reason is stacked in heaps of hay protected under a grass- thatched shed at his home in Alago Alba.

“When the rains have fallen and there is pasture, I collect as much as I can and then store it in bales to prepare for the dry season,” explained the fatherof-six. “This saves me the long and dangerous journey in search of pasture.”

An old technology – cutting and baling hay – is making inroads as a form of climate change adaptation in northern Kenya, where worsening droughts have increased the length and uncertainty of migrations to find pasture, and at times led conflict over and grass.

The problems faced by livestock-owning families in northern Kenya is clear from a remote automated weather station at the Dertu Millenium Village centre, which shows that rainfall readings can remain at zero for many days during the dry season.

The solar-powered unit also shows that wind speeds can be as high as 40km/h, and daytime temperatures increasingly high. The station operates as “a drought early to worsening scarce water warning system”, explained Samuel Mbalu, a database manager at the station. Without such help, “herders lose their livestock to the drought while families flee their homes in search of food and water”.

The Dertu Millennium Village is one set of communities testing means of ending extreme poverty through sustainable development. The villages were established by organisations including the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the UN Development Programme.

For the decade or so he has worked at Dertu, Mbalu has repeatedly tried to convince the community in the area to reduce their herds of livestock to manageable levels when the dry season is about to set in. But few have been persuaded.

“The herders believe that reducing the livestock is taking away (their) livelihood and prestige in society,” Mbalu said. “They would rather have their stocks die than sell.”

However, a few, like Hassan, have taken up other of Mbalu’s ideas, including baling hay to get animals through the dry times.

Saving more animals in drought periods is having farreaching effects in the community. At the Dertu Boarding Primary School, classrooms are full of children busy with lessons – a change from the times when boys would have been home assisting their families with preparations for the migration in search of pasture, said school principal Sofia Ali.

The girls, she says, at this time would have been married off to reduce the families’ burden of coping with drought.

One of these would have been 13-year-old Halima Hassan, who is in Class 4. She is Ibrahim Hassan’s daughter.

“I was tempted to marry her off, but I am happy I did not. She is now getting an education thanks to a settled life,” said Halima’s father, as he rationed handfuls of hay to his healthylooking herd of cattle at his home.

Other changes are also under way. Nunow Rage, 35, said her husband’s decision to begin reducing his herds and to cut hay rather than migrating has allowed her to invest in a clothing business at the Dertu shopping centre.

And it is not only in northern Kenya that hay baling is winning converts. At the Mwea irrigation scheme in Central Kenya, youth groups are baling dry rice straw and selling it as livestock fodder, said David Bundi, the Kiratina Hay Product youth group chairman.

A bale of hay weighing about 14kg can fetch as much as $7 (R81), he said.

He hopes the government will begin supporting such innovations, both to provide youth jobs and to help the country deal with worsening drought. – Reuters