Page 31 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 9

HEALTH & WELLNESS

We had the opportunity and privilege to talk to Dr. Peter

Ogere Mokaya, the Director of Organic Consumers Alliance regenerate. Unfortunately, there’s a
in Kenya about the real solutions to dis-ease in Afrika that threat to that kind of way in which
are found in organic food and a lifestyle and ecosystem reset food was grown, by the interests
to return to a place of harmony and balance. This is an ex- that are usually commercial, from
the people coming from the West.
cerpt of that conversation, the full interview is available on

Msingi Afrika TV. The big companies that are com-
ing up now with agrochemicals
and fertilizers and saying,
“Use this you’ll get
a bigger yield.”
What is organic food and we call dis-ease. And these disease Indeed, yes,
farming and why does it manifestations are in human beings, you will
matter? in animals, in plants and even in the receive
To really simplify it: it’s food grown soil below the ground. So, organic is
the natural way. The natural way that which is in tandem with nature
meaning the way our grandparents that allows the natural systems to
grew food, in tandem with nature; regenerate and allow a state of bal-
mixed variety plants, chicken, goats, ance to exist.
cows all together and using natural
products and elements to grow the What is Afrika currently
food, without the use of synthetic doing?
agrochemicals. That’s a very key dis- Afrika is currently largely doing
tinguishing feature. It’s the kienyeji organic, by default. We are
(local) way it was grown before considered a little primitive in
we were “civilized” to start using our farming. We go to the ground,
things which were manufactured we get hold of the seeds, we store
somewhere in a factory and brought them, we eat some of them, pre-
to supposedly enrich the soil. So, serve the best for the next season,
as much as people think that it’s a we share them and we grow. So,
foreign concept, it’s a very Afrikan most of Afrika has maintained that
concept, it’s a very human concept. kind of farming, but, increasingly
It’s in tandem with the natural cycles now, we are modernizing our farm-
of how people live with plants, with ing from influence from outside.
animals and with the entire ecosys- We are being told that that system
tem. of farming cannot create what they a
call, food security, so there’s need big-
What are its benefits? now to adopt the so-called modern ger yield
I wouldn’t even call them bene- farming systems. Where somebody because
fits; it’s the goodness that flows manufactures certain agrochemicals you are feeding
out of organic farming, because or inputs in a factory and sells them the plant, but while
it’s informed by the principles of to you to use them for enriching the you’re feeding the plant
fairness, of love, of care and of soil and growing the food. with the so-called agrochem-
being in alignment with natural icals, over time you are destroying
systems. The benefit is that if we So Afrika is to a large extent still the soil. Many farmers don’t realize
align ourselves with that, we will organic, by default, but we need to that, but I think gradually now,
be in a state of balance. There will improve some of those systems many parts of Afrika – including
be enough to consume and enough of farming so that we can increase Kenya – the maize-growing region
to allow the environment to be in more of the ecosystem where we like for example in Kitale, they are
a state of balance. Because of the can grow both the plants and the now realizing that the yield in spite
interferences that we have done, the animals… including indigenous vari- all of the inputs of agrochemicals
ecosystem is in a state of imbalance, eties of plants, and then, of course, – the fertilizers, the chemicals – the
a state of not being at ease. What allow plant life and animal life to yield has plateaued and has started

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