Self-Help Food and Fuel Supplements for Impoverished Communities in Kenya
File(s)
Date
2008-05Author
Syano, Nicholas Mutuku
Publisher
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, College of Natural Resources
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Infection by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus causing Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a devastating pandemic worldwide. Globally an
estimated 40 million people are currently infected with the virus and about 20 million
people have died. Within Kenya’s population of 35 million at least two million people are
living with HIV/AIDS disease while 1.5 million have perished from the scourge.
Research suggests that malnutrition leads to immune system impairment, exacerbates the
effects of HIV/AIDS, and contributes to a more rapid progression of the disease.
Medication for HIV patients helps little in the absence of adequate nutrition. The lifesaving
benefits of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment have been established in Kenya, but due
to poverty and food insecurity leading to poor nutrition among HIV patients, the full
benefits of ARV treatment are often nullified. Nutrition intervention to date is lagging,
with current international humanitarian practices and research tending to focus on food
aid supplements with little support for local production of a balanced, fresh and
nutritional diet for people affected by HIV/AIDS. Urgent self-help food security is
needed locally. A sustainable approach is to combine antiretroviral drugs with adequate
nutrition from food grown locally by patients and their families themselves.
To sterilize water by boiling and to cook food, these same HIV-affected persons
need a sustainable, convenient and affordable source of domestic fuelwood, too. In
Kenya, over 75% of the people use fuelwood as either firewood or charcoal as the most
accessible source of energy. However, this practice has led to massive depletion of
woody vegetation and fuelwood shortages spurring demand and skyrocketing prices of
charcoal and/or firewood. Therefore, an environmentally and economically sound method
of sustainable fuelwood production for domestic use in Kenya is an urgent need. Utilizing
dryland indigenous trees and shrubs in polyculture agroforestry systems for sustained
yield harvesting is an attractive alternative to the current unsustainable, illegal taking of
wood from forest reserves. Small-plot agroforestry with native dryland woody species
adapted to local conditions holds great promise for self-help fuel production.
As part of GEM projects addressing HIV/AIDS and sustainable agriculture and
forestry, this thesis addresses both critical needs of self-help food and fuel security for
impoverished communities in Kenya. For self-help food production training, different
organic gardening techniques such as compost-making, organic polyculture, square-meter
garden and sack garden establishment, plant pest and disease management, and
maintenance were deployed with over 1,200 persons trained and over 700 gardens
installed within a one-year period. For self-help fuelwood production, a seedling nursery
experiment was designed to test early growth responses of promising dryland woody
species and provenances for sustainable fuelwood and charcoal production. Both kitchen
garden and backyard domestic fuelwood systems can be implemented through a simple
integrated, sustainable agroforestry design for family households in Kenya and elsewhere
worldwide. This self-help food and self-help fuel project contributed significantly to
GEM’s grassroots progress towards achieving six Millennium Development Goals:
[MDG 1] eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; [MDG 3] promote gender equality and
empower women; [MDG 4] reduce child mortality; [MDG 5] improve maternal health;
[MDG 6] combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; and [MDG 7] insure
environmental sustainability.