By Simon Munyeki
Although farmers in laikipia have
mainly over relied on maize production and livestock keeping due to its arid climatic conditions introduction of other different crops has not
been well embraced by the local communities who are not well informed on the
benefits of such crops such as the sunflower.
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| sunflower inter cropped with maize |
Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) through its community trainers has taken up the challenge of promoting
cultivation of sunflower in Olmoran ward and laikipia county in general. Although
sunflower does well when planted alone in the field farmers in olmoran have been
intercropping it with the maize fearing that sunflower may not be more
profitable as maize.
When planting sunflower, a farmer
must consider type of the soil on which he/she intends to plant, the soil
should be well fertile, well drained to avoid water logging which is not good
for sunflower production. Land should be well prepared and hard soil pans
broken before planting the sunflower seeds to promote even germination of seeds,
two kilograms of sunflower seeds are recommended per acre in order to achieve a
plant population of 800-1000 plants per acre use of organic manure during
planting is recommended.
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| locally pressed sunflower oil |
Sunflower fields should always be
kept clean by regular weeding in order to have healthy crops and reduce nutrients
and water competition between the weeds and sunflower and also keeps the soil
well aerated. Under favorable conditions sunflower take three to four months to
maturity. Dry Sunflower leaves promote soil organic matter hence making the
soil more fertile.
Mature sunflower heads are manually
harvested by cutting them by hand using a knife and sun dried, when dry , seeds
are separated from the husks manually although mechanical seed separation can
be done when production is large scale and commercial unlike the case of olmoran
ward. The seeds are then taken to the pressing centre where oil is extracted
for local markets, while the residues from pressed seeds are used as animal
feed.
