One of the millennium development goals (MDGs) for Kenya is to halve the proportion of people living on less than 1 dollar a day. Kenya has a population of about 44.35 million with a good proportion living in rural areas where the main economic activity is subsistence farming. This also forms a huge proportion of the population living on less than a dollar a day.

The size of arable land in Kenya is about 10.2% of the total land. Most of this land is taken up by cash crops such as tea and coffee living little land for food crops. Though the county is food sufficient, recent cases of drought have seen the government provide relief food for some areas of the country. With subdivision of land for sale and putting up of permanent structures on the same on the increase, more land that could have been used for agriculture is on the decline.

To compound the situation, there is also an increase in the youth population with about 1 million young adults joining the work force each year. However, job creation and opportunities still remain a huge challenge in the country. The government has been on a campaign to try and urge more young people to venture into self-employment by advancing of credit facilities for them to set up businesses. Also, investment in different areas of the economy has seen also been on the increase, a sign of better fortunes in the future.

Kenya has a capacity to have about 45% of its land under agriculture using irrigation. This remains one of the areas, if properly tapped, could reap huge benefits of the country. Agriculture, still forms the backbone of the country employing about 70% of the population directly or indirectly. If more youth can get into agriculture, this would increase the food sufficiency of the country as well as increase the amount of land under agriculture. It would also offer much needed employment opportunities to the youth. This remains one of the areas that has been hugely untapped. The government has started a project to have 1 million acres of land under irrigation in Tana River County. Similar other projects by different counties have been initiated in Mandera, Wajir, Lodwar etc.

In 2013, 2 aquifers were discovered in Turkana that could supply the country with water for up to 70 years. The water can be used for irrigation. For us to increase the land under agriculture, we must employ technology such as irrigation. At Davis & Shirtliff, our solutions are aimed at improving people’s lives. With some of the products that we offers such as engine pumps, one can be able to do irrigation on their land, all year round instead of relying on rain fed agriculture that has become quite erratic. Irrigation allows one to farm all year round and increase the acreage under agriculture. This concept has been taken up and has seen farms mushroom in areas usually considered too dry for farming such as Kajiado, Makueni, Kitui, Mandera and Turkana.

We offer a wide range of solutions that can help you turn your farm into a business that has the potential to employ hundreds. Click here to see some of our solutions. You can also get in touch with us on this here or drop us a line at +254719079000