A healthy harvest
After his father died, Wanyonyi’s mother struggled to provide for him and his seven siblings. With the proceeds of what she could grow on the family’s acre of land, and school bursaries, she was able to send Wanyonyi to school – where he has proved a great success.
He is school captain and chair of the young farmers’ club at Friends Bwake Secondary School in Kenya, where Farm Africa has been providing training in good farming techniques.
How to grow tomatoes
Farm Africa helped students set up a demonstration plot at school and taught them how to use a greenhouse. Wanyonyi and his fellow students now know how to grow crops including tomatoes and cucumber.
The school’s first tomato harvest was 160lb, which has been followed by even bigger harvests. The school sells their produce to an eager market of local supermarkets and teachers. Their tomatoes fetch 20 Kenyan shillings a pound.
Wanyonyi has specialised in applying pesticides, watering and soil improvement. His young farmers’ club goes out twice a month to spread the word to other young people in the area.
Healthy lives
He says: “Now we eat some of the crops we grow, and follow health advice, most students lead healthy lives.”
With his new skills, Wanyonyi is confident he’ll get a place at university, and he plans to work for an agricultural institution.
“I want to improve the farming in our home, to lift my family out of hunger and poverty,” he says.
