Presentación de Habiba Boru de Kenya en el marco del Seminario Internacional de Expertos sobre 'Diversidad Cultural, Sistemas Alimentarios y Estrategias Tradicionales de Vida' realizado del 4 al 6 de noviembre de 2014 en Cusco Perú.

1. CASE STUDY PROPOSAL
HABIBA BORU ADI
MARSABIT TOWN, KENYA
26th October 2014
Introduction
My name is Habiba Boru aged 52 years old. I am an indigenous livestock and organic farmer
from Marsabit district in Kenya where I have lived all my life.I have been a local goat breed
and organic farmer only for the past 3 years. My rural hometown village of Water Supply,
located on the slopes of Mt. Marsabit, is where I keep my 5 goats. The slope is rich in fertile
volcanic soil good for small scale gardening. I organically grow kales, beans, spinach,
tomatoes, sweet potatoes and sprinkling of coriander, rosemary and fenugreek.
I am a Gabbra, from a small pastoralist nomadic community living in the arid northern part of
Kenya. The Gabbra have a mixed livestock economy comprising camels, cattle sheep and
goats, with the strongest attachment to camels. The Gabbra diet is mainly meat and milk.
The community is also highly patrilineal.
With the advent of urbanization, a large number of educated Gabbra people are settling
down and adopting modern ways of doing things.
What prompted me to start organic farming
Kenya like every other part of the world has faced challenges on food quality, with dog meat
sometimes passed of as beef, plants harvested before chemical pesticides have worn off
and animals sometimes slaughtered or milked soon after administration of medical drugs.
It is a world of extreme uncertainty when you cannot be sure what you eat will not cause
you or your loved ones harm.
Traditional organic farming practices have safeguarded us over the years from these
challenges so when I decided to take up farming, organic agriculture was my only choice.

2. Being a trained primary school teacher, who has read and experienced the hazards of
inorganic farming, I nurture the thought of being able to protect and sustain my family from
the poisons emanating from lack of compliance to food safety standards after
administration of toxic antibiotics.
My farm
My farming activities are done on a 0.4 ha of land which is also where I reside. My land is
adjacent to the forest where part of it stretches down in to a small seasonal stream. The
advantage of living in this area is that water is in plenty and grass grows freely.
Before bringing in livestock, I began by planting a plant locally known as ‘lukinya’ and
tending the indigenous vegetation and shrubs that grow in my compound along the forest
edge. This was to offer good forage for my goats. I converted the grass that grew in my
compound into hay bales and stored them in a rainproof storage. Before my goats arrived I
sold the excess hay that I could not store to other livestock keepers.
In parallel, I started my organic farming where I chose to cultivate a 60m2 lot of land on
which I planted local kales(Bondo), spinach, tomatoes and sweet potatoes and a bit of
herbs. All these are plants that provide great flavour to food but also provide health
benefits, for example sweet potato is an excellent source of vitamin A, an alarmingly
common deficiency in Kenya.
I took a loan of 100,000ksh from the local teachers co-operative union in addition to savings
from the proceeds from the sale of hay to embark on the mission to build a shelter that will
provide security from thieves and wild predators common in the Marsabit forest region, for
several goats. Once this was ready, I bought 3 local breed dairy goats. Breeding is an
important part of the pastoralist culture and for me as an individual finding ways of

3. increasing yield, efficiently and ethically is a big way of ensuring that traditional livestock
breeds persist.
I feed my goats with the sweet potato vines and I also supplement my family diet with all the
crops I grow. I am very confident in the quality of my farm produce and the integrity of the
environment I grow them in because I use no pesticides or artificial fertilizers.
Pest and Disease Management
I use the manure from my goats for fertilizer and ash and chilli to fight many plant diseases.
We grind fresh red chilli peppers, and soak in water overnight. Half a kilo of chilli soaked in 1
or 2ltrs of water. Ash is sprinkled dry on plantsthat show signs of diseases, particularly when
they start to turn yellow or develop a white powdery covering.
I realized my goats rarely get sick and when they do, I isolate the sick goat and administrate
local treatments. For example for tick infestation, smearing sheep fat on their coat to stop
this.
When they bloat we smear a wet mixture of cow dung and mud around the belly area and
leave to dry.
For Colds, we dissolve tobacco in water (1/2 Kg of tobacco soaked in 1ltr water) , drain and
spray into the nose with a syringe. The goat sneezes and clears the mucus from the nose
allowing them to breathe again.
It is still a learning process for me 3years on.
Results
I have managed to double the yield of a traditional goats I breed from an average of 1 cup
(approx 250ml) to up to 750ml through natural and organic feeds that are locally grown in
my compound. These include “Quraa” or Kei Apple, an evergreen bush which is locally
grown for fences. I fortify this with salt from local salt pans in Chalbi desert that provide the

4. much needed minerals. Through feed intervention using locally available materials has
inspired more farmers around me to duplicate these husbandry practices.
As a result of keeping the of my farming:
1. Manure from the goats is used to fertilise the vegatable garden
2. I sell surplus milk to my neighbours when I can.
3. Emplyment opportunities for more women are created. Proceeds from my milk sale
are used to employ and pay for my herders.
4. I’m comfortable drinking the milk from my goats without any underlying fear of
harmful chemicals.
Challenges
All my children are employed and have their own families or are in ntertiary education
institutions. Because of the scale of my farming they do not considered a viable economic
activity to support the type of lifestyle they lead. So I’m certainly challenged on my
succession plan.
In addition lack of appreciation of this type of farming means that people do not fully
understand the value of organic farm produce. Often people look at size of the vegetable as
a sign of health and value, so organically grown crops that are generally smaller than
genetically modified varieties are many times ignored over their inorganically grown
relatives.
Finally, the scale of my farming is also not large enough to make as much social impact as I
would like outside the area where I live.
Hopefully by encouraging more people around me to take up organic farming practices and
sharing the benefits of organically grown plant and livestock products will change this.

5. The future
My personal goal is the ability to provide sufficient healthy food for myself and my family.
With the looming acceptance of GMO seeds by my government, my interest in family
farming has been strengthened so as to maintain the safety of the food that I feed my
family.
In future, I would like to increase the variety of crops I have by adding fruit trees, free-range
poultry and eggs. Longer term, I would like to work with more farmers like myself to supply
healthy food to growing young children in schools. In this way, we would create more
variety in the children’s diet, and awareness on the benefits of organic food on a larger scale
that what we are currently doing.
I have dream of motivating and empowering my local womenfolk to improve their economic
conditions through a simple practical approach such as organic farming. I discuss my
successes and challenges in this venture in the women groups that I belong to share this
information with them and hopefully motivate them to take up family farming for
themselves. This is my small way of ensuring safer and healthier food, on garden at a time as
well as helping women get socially and economically empowered in the patrilineal society
we live in where family assets go solely to men.
Expectation from the conference
I hope that I will come back with new knowledge and practices from other parts of the
world that will allow me to become a better organic farmer. I anticipate from the interaction
with longer established farmers will give me the confidence to spread the word on organic
farming with much more conviction and a view of what the bigger possibilities on my small
domestic farm are.