Training in Plant Health and Food Security

Written by Faith, HHFL

A few of us at HHFL had the most amazing opportunity to train for one week at KEPHIS in June!

KEPHIS stands for Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service. It’s an Institution under Kenya Agriculture that deals mostly with food security in Kenya. They also support research on how to increase food in Kenya since even the Kenyan population is increasing day in, day out.

They also ensure that the food being exported from Kenya is safe and good for human use, protecting the Kenyan Export Market. On export, they mostly deal with Avocados such as Fuete and so many other food crops and herbs too such as rosemary.

We visited their Nairobi headquarters with my fellow kids being Beatrice Wamaitha, Nicodemus Ndunda, Joseph Kariuki, Asha Kiza and Elizabeth Letoto. We enjoyed a one week training with them and we also got to attend the 2nd Phytosanitary Conference that was held from 4th-8th June 2018.

Phytosanity means hygiene on our farms and not only on our farms, but even at our homes too.

They organized this conference in order to educate all the Kenyan farmers on how to handle and protect their crops from pests and how they get their food in the Kenyan food market. We learned about all the different challenges being faced by these farmers in their various farms.

We learned about pest control and the different types of chemicals that can be used on large scale farming and small scale too including the quantity that’s used, where they can be found and the cost of them.

The other thing we learned was about seeds and how we can stop fake seeds being sold in Kenya and how we can deal with issues if you have been given fake seeds.

We learned about orange sweet potatoes and their benefits too. We learned about the herbs and the benefits in the Kenyan Market and outside too.

It was such an interesting training! We never knew there was so much to learn with agriculture and farming. We even realized that there is a lot of opportunity for jobs and that it can be a very cool career!

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