Better Globe Forestry

Nyangoro ranch at the start of the rainy season. Grass is sproutingWitu Nyangoro Ranch Directed Agricultural Company Ltd, to give it its full name, is the owner of Nyangoro Ranch in Lamu district, at the northern end of the Kenyan coastline. The ranch is about 32,000ha, part of which has been earmarked for  a lease to Better Globe Forestry Ltd. It is lush savannah land, with clumps of trees and sometimes a forest, lying across the Lamu-Malindi highway.

As its name implies, the ranch was home to livestock rearing activities in the early 1980s, until misfortune struck, and cattle rustlers stole hundreds of head of cattle. Coupled with mismanagement by ranch officials, the ranch could not overcome its problems and fell into a dormant state for over 15 years.

A seven-month-old block of mukau (Melia volkensii). Musya the foreman can deduce that growth is fast as all trees are more than 2 metres highBetter Globe Forestry Ltd started its first fieldwork in Kenya at the end of 2006, at Katithini, on a 100ha site by Lake Kiambere in eastern Kenya. The Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority (TARDA) owns the land. TARDA has a powerful incentive to entrust the land to BGF for afforestation, as Lake Kiambere is one of the major hydro reservoirs for generation of electricity for Kenya.

The lake is fed by Kenya’s biggest river, the Tana that originates from the slopes of Mount Kenya. Its tributaries find their way to the lowlands through densely populated areas, carrying plenty of soil from erosion. TARDA has a catchment protection programme, but the waters of the river are very brown every rainy season. The situation is compounded by intense erosion around the lake, where literally thousands of tonnes of soil are washed into the lake after every major downpour. This fills up the dam, decreasing its lifespan, and hence reducing the capacity for provision of affordable electricity.

Five-year-old mango trees, watered by drip irrigation. All mango trees have been grafted, and most of the grafts are of the Apple variety, of excellent quality and good for exportThis is a 20ha commercial farm 220km South of Nairobi in the Southern Ukambani drylands. It is watered by Kibwezi river, allowing irrigation of vegetables (1.5ha) and fruit trees (mangoes 7ha). Other activities include tree growing (mostly mukau or Melia volkensii and Azadirachta indica, the neem tree), small-scale sheep rearing and bee keeping. Of course there is a tree nursery, and activities such as fodder production for the sheep and compost making.

A special feature of Mukuyu farm is its low pressure irrigation system, with cheap water storage tanks. These are simple earth embankments with a plastic liner, linked for irrigation with Kenyan-made PE pipes. Their sizes are flexible, and such basins can contain anything between 30-100,000 ltr of water.

Jan Vandenabeele, the Executive Director of Better Globe Forestry (BGF) is one of the directors of Kibwezi Mukuyu Farm Ltd. Its activities are independent of BGF, but there are synergies to exploit, notably regarding training opportunities for farmers in drylands. BGF has a programme for capacity building for farmers in the bufferzones around its plantations, and farmers by nature are persons on the look-out for innovations useful for their particular circumstances. Not everything they find on Mukuyu farm will suit them. But among the variety of technologies on offer, inevitably some are of interest to them. Easy examples are the different drought resistant species of fodder plants for livestock, the use of biopesticides based on neem, and modern bee keeping.

The map below indicates the areas where we have the Better Globe Forestry projects. You can also get a close up look using the Google Earth Coordinates on the bottom right side of the web page