Follow your dreams in Kenya

The only reason you are human is your ability to follow your dreams, when hope seems idiotic and your ability to fight proves otherwise. Sometimes you’ll win not because you are the best but because you follow your dreams to the last breathe as this is what defines humanity. You should not give up on whatever basis no matter how weird, far-fetched and skeptic you might think you follow your dreams are they are achievable. You only need to make the effort since the only thing between you and success is the will to follow your dreams. The only difference between success and failure is the drive, the passion, and handwork to achieve and be a in a place of exclusives. 

Today is the day to evaluate your goals revisit your vision, make both short term and long term goals and celebrate after achieving the short term goals.Fix your eyes on the long term goals with patience and surely you will reach there. Achievement of the vision calls for sacrifice and perseverance. Other people`s opinions should not define what or who you become. Keep focusing your vision and remember a person with no destination cannot get lost since every destination is good for him. Business plan development is crucial as you follow your dreams. A business plan is a document that supports you to plan growth, seek funding, and monitor performance over a period of time. 

The question of how much money you need and where it will from is the last step in a business plan. There’s an assumption that to grow a business, you need to get access to capital. According Paul Hawkent the author of Growing a Business, the problem with growing a business isn’t the lack of access to capital, but having and borrowing capital before your business is ready to grow and before you’ve fully developed your business model. Remember a business plan is the road-map as you follow your dreams to success. Every person can make it but, it takes real men/women to achieve their wildest dreams.

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Integrated pests management (I.P.M)

Integrated pests management refers to a wide range of tactics to prevent pests of all kinds from reaching damaging levels in plants. Pests can be  insects, mites, diseases, weed or vertebrates such as birds. Integrated management involves use of a combination of the following methods/tools.

Biological control

• Predators for integrated management: e.g. use of ladybird to control of predatory mites, mites, whiteflies, aphids etc.
• Parasites :parasitoid such as parasitic wasp
• Pathogens: e.g. use of fungus Bauveria bassiana to control banana and sweet potato weevil, a bacteria Bassillus thuringiensis is used in control of lapidopteran larvae
• Biological agents can be commercially prepared such as swirski mite, spical, spidex, ercal etc.  

Cultural Control

This involves use of agronomic practices that are designed to optimize crop growing conditions and increase the competitive edge. This results in increased tolerance and reduced chemical use. The cultural methods include:-

·        Crop rotation: this works by reducing the levels of pests attack due to rotation with non susceptible host.

·        Selecting resistant plant varieties: This helps to reduce severity of the attack in integrated management.

·        Cultivation/tillage practices

·        Variation of planting or harvesting dates: e.g. delayed planting in sunflower to reduce the sunflower beetle densities as integrated management measures.

·        Plant spacing: narrower row spacing favours development of diseases, due to environmental conditions within the canopy.

·        Fertilization level: a crop with a balanced fertility  levels  has a greater capacity to compete with weeds

·        Sanitation: Cleaning out storage areas helps prevent infestation of stored grain. Use of clean farm equipments and clean soil helps prevents spread of nematodes

·        Planting pests’ free seed or using seed treatment with a fungicide will help protect germinating seed and seedlings from seedling blight.

·        Planting trap crops: This consists of a surrounding field margin. The margins flower earlier and attract the insects concentrating them in a small area which reduces the cost of insecticide and the time required.

Plant resistance control

Classical selective breeding or genetic modification is used for integrated manament leading to a plant that is resistant, no longer preferred by the pests or creates an adverse effect.

Chemical control

This involves use of chemicals for integrated control. However they should only be used as a last result and when preventative and all other management techniques have failed, or are no longer economical. They also should be used in a manner that is legal considering rate of application, target crop etc.

Physical or mechanical control

This involves use of machinery or other tools for integrated management e.g.  

• Tillage-Row cultivation can be used as a stand alone weed management practice or in conjunction with herbicide program.
• Physical barriers e.g. mulching.
• Exclusion using screens or barriers, preventing the pests from reaching and destroying crops/grains.
• Trapping, suction devices such as pherohormone traps, can be used in integrated management to catch insects, sticky traps and light traps.
• Use of heat in soil sterilization for control of nematodes and other plant pests

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Rio+20 earth summit on sustainable development in Brazil June 2012

“Rio+20” is the short name for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. 20 years ago, United Nations Conference on Environment/climate change and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro from 3-14 June 1992. This was the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development .152 World leaders made a remarkable deal in Brazil Rio de Janeiro and Agenda 21, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Rio Declaration was born. These led to big changes in the way of solving global environmental and development problems the world faced at the time, hoping to ensure poverty ceases from being the order of the day.

Rio +20 earth summits on sustainable development which is expected to take place from 20th - 22nd June 2012, will bring together world leaders and participants from the private sector, NGOs, and sustainable development conscious groups. The aim of the earth summit on sustainable development is to assess the progress made so far, come up with new agreements to enhance sustainable development, environment and climate change. Ironically climate change impacts are today more evident than ever locally and internationally, and they include environmental degradation, lack of food and water security and increased poverty in the developing countries. Many nations are waiting expectantly for the Rio+20 conferences to come up with concrete measures to save the environment and help developing countries continue to deal with poverty. The official agenda will focus on two main themes:-

·        How to build a green economy for achievement of sustainable development and poverty reduction

·        How to improve international coordination for poverty reduction and sustainable development.

We need Rio+20 as it’s essential to ensure our children and grandchildren do not inherit poverty due to climate change .The challenges of widespread poverty and climate change need to be dealt with now. The world today has 7 billion people by 2050 it will be 9 billion. One out of every five people, 1.4 billion currently lives on $1.25 a day or less. Two and a half billion people don’t have a toilet. A billion and half people in the world have no access to electricity. Almost a billion people go hungry every day. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and more than a third of all known species could get extinct if climate change continues unrestrained. Rio+20 will give us a new opportunity to address climate change and global poverty. Want to learn more about the agreement at Rio+20 in June 2012? Go to http://www.uncsd2012.org/content/document/727The%20Future%20We%20Want%2019%20June%201230pm.pdf

 

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Basic Food security for poverty reduction & sustainable development in kenya

Food security exists when there are adequate, accessible, affordable, nutritious and safe provisions, for all people at all times, to maintain a healthy and active life. Food security for sustainable development has three pillars which are availability, access and use according to knowledge of basic nutrition. Several political promises to ensure food security for sustainable development have been made by various national leaders. On the contrary the number of starving incidence recur frequently due to lack of concrete action. The number of hungry people globally also increased from 824 million in 1990, [the ‘MDG’ baseline year] to 925 million in 2010.The world population is expected increase to 9 billion by 2050. This calls for urgent prioritization of provisions issues . The right to provisions is a fundamental right of everyone, 'to be free from hunger' according to provisions of article 11 of the International Convent on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the branch of international law inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Climbing beans

Therefore the National government has an obligation to establish non-discriminatory and non-political policy on food security for sustainable development. People exposed to hunger worldwide are likely to  reach one billion by the end of 2011.Global cereal demand is expected to rise by 1 billion tons over the next four decades which is a fore warning that the time of low provisions prices is over. Consequently there is need to improve world agricultural productivity by 70% come 2050.This should be done with sound environmental management practices in mind for sustainable development and improvement of provisions. One of the best methods to ensure national food security in Kenya is innovation. This calls for support for implementation of new ideas, new information, and new technologies for sustainable development. Despite marvelous benefits of investment in agriculture in the last 25 years, wealthy countries have reduced the budget for international agriculture at an alarming rate whereas in fact the budget needs to be increased.

The current climate change has increased pressure on provisions and greatly challenges sustainable development. Global warming is progressively reducing agricultural production, undermining food security in Kenya and many developing countries. Policies that could help farmers adapt to changing climate include irrigated agriculture, agricultural research, flood control and controlling human resettlement. The Government should investment in small scale farmers and herders and empower the most vulnerable people to take charge of their food security. This is cheaper than giving provisions and enhances sustainable development.

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