Farmers embrace ancient methods to preserve seeds

The firewood lighting up a three-stoned stove crackles in Christine Rutto’s mud-walled kitchen as a soot-filled cooking pot simmers with the day's lunch. 

Schools are on a half term break and Christine is expecting her children for a three-day recess. They have to find food ready. Christine squints as the smoke rises above the stove, and from the roof of this kitchen, a maize cob and a bundle of sorghum dangle. The grains are coated in smoke and soot.

"These are seeds," says Christine, pointing at them. "No weevil or any other insect can touch the grains when they are up there," she adds.

A sack with calabashes filled with maize seeds mixed with ash and neem leaves also hangs on the roof. This is another preservation method that Christine has been trying out and it has proven effective so far.

Christine lives in Chepkotoen, more than 20 kilometres from Marigat, the nearest urban centre in Baringo South. Despite this area being arid and semi-arid, Christine depends on irrigation to grow food. She has been saving and preserving her seeds using locally available resources like the ash and smoke in her kitchen.

"Travelling from here to Marigat is quite a distance and I have to use a motorcycle, and that alone is Sh600 spent as fare. I haven't even factored in the money I would need to buy seeds," she says.

The mother of five ventured into organic agriculture in 2013 after her two young children were hospitalised due to malnutrition.

"My youngest two were underweight and severely malnourished. I was told they needed to eat vegetables and fruits," she says.

According to the Baringo County Nutrition Action Plan for 2019- 2023, under-nutrition has remained a persistent challenge, especially among children aged between six and 59 months and women of reproductive.

Christine says she started saving a variety of vegetables, fruits, legumes and maize seeds to enrich the food her family ate. 

Living far from Marigat means that she also has to seek alternative ways of preserving her seeds, and that's where the ash and neem come in.

"When I use the ash and dried neem leaves, I also save on buying pesticides. Plus, I know the quality of my seeds instead of going to the market, where sometimes you get cheated.” 

She explains that she is now able to give her children diverse meals.

"In the past I used to buy vegetables and fruits whenever I had money, but now that I grow my food and fruits, my children are  in good health," she adds with a beaming smile.

From Baringo, the Healthy Nation team heads to Ingoste in Kakamega County, where they meet Mary Anekea. Mary credits her grandmother for her knowledge of seed preservation using cow dung, ash and soot. 

"My grandmother told me that during her heydays, there were no agrovets, so they had to find a way of storing seeds in preparation for planting," she explains.

We follow Mary to a cowshed, where she collects dry pieces of dung from the floor. She then gathers them on an iron sheet and burns the dung until it turns into ash. She pours the ash in a container full of yellow maize seeds, mixing them until the ash coats the grains.

"We are trying to bring back this yellow maize through seed saving. The benefit of having these seeds with me is that I have enough food at home and my children do not have to feed on the same type of food daily," says Mary.

In the kitchen, Mary also collects the soot gathered on the walls above the fireplace and mixes it with vegetable seeds. 

A little yonder in Vihiga County, Mary Kwena sorts through leftover bricks made from red clay. 

"You have to make sure it's been baked just right and the colour is uniform throughout the brick," she says.

She crushes the brick into fine powder with a hammer and sifts it before mixing it with beans. 

"I learnt this from my grandmother, and I have been using this clay powder to preserve my seeds for 20 years now," she adds. 

Similarly, Elizabeth Omusiele says her inquisitive mind led her to try out Tithonia leaves as a preservative.

"I decided to research on the internet what other uses Tithonia has because I had problems with weevils attacking my maize," she explains. 

Elizabeth says she then decided to extract the sap from Tithonia leaves and stalks by crushing them, soaking the crushed leaves in water, washing her maize seeds in the dark green mixture and air-drying them in the sun.

"Before we knew the importance of proper nutrition and having kitchen gardens, some children died due to malnutrition, but that is in the past now," she adds.

In a two-year study, the Genetic Resources Research Institute (GRRI) tested the efficacy of traditional seed preservation methods in collaboration with Seed Savers Network Kenya. According to Dr Desterio Nyamongo, the institute director, modern seed preservation methods are derived from traditional ones.

He explains: "To keep seeds for a long time, you must reduce their moisture content and store them at low temperatures."

According to GRRI, the loss of habitats across the country implies that genetic diversity in those habitats has disappeared. Conventional agriculture is partly responsible for losing indigenous genetic material found in some places. Indigenous seeds are usually the blueprints used in research to develop advanced varieties.

The study on various seed preservation methods found that while they are effective for short-term preservation, frequent germination tests are necessary to ensure the seeds' health.

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