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Thursday 2 August 2018

laikipia Gold


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.
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.
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.