By MaryAnne Musilo

In semi-arid Kitui County, Winfridah Muvea has tripled her income the last three years by switching from traditional to Bt cotton. But, with every season a race against the weather, she has been defying a nationwide cotton slump since the Bt rollout.

Based in Kitui East, Winfridah began growing traditional cotton on two-and-a-half acres in 2019. That year, she harvested 800 kilograms, earning Sh52 per kg, to make Sh33,600 in annual cotton income.

In 2021, she switched to Bt cotton, allocating two acres to it and setting aside the remaining half-acre for food crops.

“The difference was clear,” she said. “In 2021, with Bt cotton, I harvested 2 tonnes from the same land.”

Unlike traditional cotton, Bt cotton gives two harvests a year, offering a doubling of production. It is also engineered with a gene from the soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to make it resistant to pests that include bollworm. 

Bollworm destroys up to 60% of traditional cotton crops in East Africa, according to KALRO.

“The bollworm pesticides were very expensive. So this is an added advantage,” said Winfridah.

Her jump in yields and saved pesticide costs have more than offset the higher seed cost, with Winfridah now earning around Sh72 per kg and an annual cotton income of around Sh144,000 a year.

But her success sits at the limits of Kitui’s rainfall of 400 to 750 mm a year.

Traditional cotton, grown in Kitui for decades, needs around 600–650 mm of water per growing season.

By contrast, Bt cotton generally needs 700mm to 780mm per growing season.

“The water needed for Bt cotton farming is a lot. I just depend on rainfall because the cost of irrigation is quite expensive,” she said.

“Rainfall is a challenge, but even with the small rains, I cannot complain, I still harvest.”

However, quality can suffer when rainfall levels are at the margins. Winfridah sells her cotton to a ginnery in Kitui town.

“Sometimes they reject the cotton, maybe because the buyers came a later day than planned, but we as farmers try our best to bring the best,” she said.

Yet not all farmers in the region have been so successful.

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Field trials and local observations confirm Bt cotton outperforms traditional cotton by 20% to 80% in optimal conditions. This has seen the government champion its introduction, distributing 16 tonnes of seed for free to 10,000 farmers in 2021.

But that has not led to the surge in production that was hoped for. Nationally, the AFA has reported cotton production has instead declined, dropping from 4,000 tonnes in 2020 to 3,000 tonnes in 2021, and further to 2,500 tonnes in 2022. 

The AFA has attributed this to the greater water needs of Bt cotton, which has seen if struggle to survive in areas where traditional cotton was grown successfully, as well as to seed distribution issues.

For Winfridah, the shift to Bt cotton has quadrupled her income, reduced her costs, and she has managed to reclaim half an acre for food crops. But for farmers weighing up a similar transition, the make-or-break is turning out to be their levels of rainfall

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