Kenya: Tourists visit villages to grow organic farming

Source: businessdailyafrica.com
By Bob Koigi

OrganicPortal NewsRoom

International tourists keen on cutting holiday spending, but sating their wanderlust and experience of other cultures are now heading for homesteads in Kisumu and other areas of Kenya under an initiative marketing organic farms as tourist destinations in return for help on the farm.

The new working holidays initiative is being run out of the UK programme called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and has put together a global network of farmers who offer accommodation and food to travellers in exchange for labour offered by the visitors.

Under the programme the WWOOF has a Web site that connects travellers with a network of organic farms spanning from Africa to South America.

An owner of an organic farm interested in the exchange subscribes, listing the location and a brief description of their activities.

Interested tourists visit the website and arrange a stay. The stay can run from two to six weeks depending on the amount of work involved.

To cushion travellers from exploitation, the programme spells out terms stay, which include working hours a day, usually between five and six.

In Kenya the organic farms participating in the programme are organised under the Kenya Organic Agriculture Network (KOAN), which explains the rules of engagement.

Kenya has 30 registered farms in WWOOF, majority of which are in Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces, against worldwide figures standing at an estimated 6,000 hosts in 100 countries. As the agriculture network expands its reach it hopes to get more organic farms into the programme, promoting tourism in the country and also fostering cultural understanding.

Achuth Women Group operating around Lake Victoria and running a three-hectare organic farm of vegetables, onions, tomatoes, bananas, pigeon peas and herding sheep and cows, has enjoyed an influx of travellers since they enrolled with WWOOF two years ago.

Rispah Okello, the chairperson, said the climax was in December last year when they got 10 visitors at a go. “We usually get a maximum of five who stay for about a month. Out of the ten last December, four stayed with us for a whole season of six months,” she said, noting the travellers were keen to know how food exported to them is handled from planting to harvesting and packaging.

The tourists were digging, fetching water from the streams, and preparing the nursery for planting. They also take the sheep and cows to the grazing field before taking a break for lunch with the other members of Achuth family.

In the afternoon,they return to the farm and also find time to go to the market.

They package the surplus for buyers of horticultural produce. For all this, they get food and accommodation.

When buyers visit the farms, the tourists help to pack their trucks before going back to the daily routine.

Good experience

“I have stayed with Achuth farm for six months now, having originally been torn between taking a holiday in Zanzibar and coming here. I have had a huge learning experience and learnt to appreciate the work that goes into some of the produce I receive in the UK imported from Kenya, like pigeon peas,” said 30-year-old Davis Lance from the UK.

“I also have saved, and would definitely want to come back. I chose to stay for a whole season to familiarise myself with the seasons of planting in Kenya.”

World Wide Opportunities was founded in Britain in 1971, but has attracted many more volunteer farmhands in recent years as hard economic times have focused westerners on cheap ways to take a vacation.

Tip: OrganicPortal South Africa - Organic Agriculture, Association,Exhibition, Consulting & Consumer Information

OrganicPortal NewsRoom

08.01.2012

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