By Kepher Otieno

Every morning Borniphas Aono, and Paul Nyakwaka look forward to tending their farms something they had not done for a while, thanks to a new farming technology.

For 15 years, the noxious striga weed affected their maize production in Yenga village, Kisumu.

Harvest time was disappointment galore. Aono recalls that he used to get about one to two bags of maize in an acre supposed to yield about six bags each season.

"This always worried me. I kept asking my self one of the best mitigation measures I could employ to forestall the effect of the noxious striga weed," he says.

But he was not alone as tens of thousands of farmers in the rural areas in Nyanza suffered a similar fate. Many of them who spoke to the Standard rued striga weed menace.

While it is estimated that 80 per cent of the labour force engages in farming, parasitic weeds such as striga roll back farmers efforts as they to battle achieve food security.

Push-pull

But now there is every reason for the farmers to smile and breathe a sigh of relief, thanks an innovation by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe). The organisation has rolled out a technology dubbed push-pull technology to reduce the infestation of parasitic plants such as the striga weed and the stem borer worm.

The two are among the most common menaces that attack common cereals like maize and millet devastating entire harvests in their wake.

The new technology involves intercropping cereal crops like maize and millet with the specific grasses desmodium and Napier.

The two types of grasses harbour natural chemicals, which repel or ‘push’ pests and weeds away or attract pulling pests in and killing them hence the name push-pull.

They target pests are the striga weed and stem borer worms both of which have been known to reduce millions worth of harvests to nothing.

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