Africa

The ‘Push-Pull’ Programme

The parasitic plant striga is estimated to cost East African maize farmers alone $408 million per year, and threatens the lives of over 300 million people in Africa.

Kilimo’s approach to the striga threat involves partnerships with not just farmers, but researchers, governments and extension services across East Africa.

Kilimo’s ‘push-pull’ programme combines a tactic for eliminating striga with one that controls stemborer moths, which eat crops from the inside while still caterpillars.

The push-pull does this through inter-cropping maize with a legume crop - which prevents the growth of striga - and through planting a grass such as napier grass as a borer crop - which attracts the stemborer moth away from the maize.

Simply eliminating these threats is not enough, as the increased yields of cereal crops could actually depress the price and reduce farmers’ income unless the subsequent surplus can be matched with new sources of demand.

As such, Kilimo is targeting improvements in the poor marketing infrastructure, so that farmers can gain full access to markets and buyers, and can benefit from increased yields bringing increased incomes. This focus on the whole supply chain is typical of Kilimo’s approach to agricultural development in East Africa.