Dismay as tomato farmer counts losses after pest attack
By KNA, January 16, 2024Fredrick Gitau has fond memories of small-scale farming from his childhood. He and his seven siblings were educated through the proceeds from the sale of tomatoes.
His family used to earn some money every three months. He recalls how his father was a well-known tomato farmer in Subukia, Nakuru County.
Having witnessed first-hand how lucrative tomato cultivation was in the 1980s, it was easy for Gitau to be enticed to delve into that wing of horticulture. His dream was to be as successful as his father was.
“Tomatoes were among my first crops when I began farming,” he says. Upon trying his hand at growing tomatoes, his high hopes appeared to be dashed. He abandoned the crop.
“Tuta Absoluta emerged,” he says. “I didn’t possess knowledge regarding the pest.”
The pest is destructive. It’s a leaf miner. It wreaked havoc on his crop.
His wife, Gladys Wangui, frets, recalling that pest. “If Tuta attacks your tomatoes, you will be finished. There’s nothing you’d harvest,” she says.
The couple incurred significant losses sometime in 2019, due to the insidious devastation by the pest. It was a complete crop failure for them. They never imagined at the time that there could be potential solutions to the menace other than chemical spraying.
Gitau laments that the farm inputs he had invested in went down the drain. “The following year, I didn’t grow tomatoes,” he says. “I switched to cabbages.” What he anticipated didn’t come to pass. “The prices were low. Earnings were poor.”
The following season, having been enlightened on how to combat Tuta Absoluta, “I sowed tomatoes again,” he says. Another adversity hit him. The drought set in. “Tomatoes require a lot of water. If they lack water for a week, they wither. Reviving them is a daunting task.”
“I dropped tomatoes and returned to cabbages,” he says. The difference in farm inputs for the two crops caught his eye. “For tomatoes, it’s higher: seeds, pesticides, and labour.”
Gitau hasn’t forgotten how well-paying tomatoes can be. “I know how to grow them in a greenhouse,” he says. “But I lack the resources to do so. If you have a greenhouse, whether or not there’s El Nino, you’ll go on.” Meanwhile, Gitau’s family has partly sought solace in mixed farming. Their one-and-a-half-acre farm hardly rests.