One of Africa’s leading sunn hemp seed suppliers is adding 30+ new farmers to his client book every three months, as savvy growers push demand for the natural fertiliser to build back their soils and yields
From supplying just a handful of farmers in 2017, Samuel Munge delivers around 10 tonnes of sunn hemp monthly to over 100 farmers.
When sunn hemp is planted and then dug back into the soil it can increase maize yields by between 8–27 per cent without any nitrogen fertiliser.
“I contract about 20 farmers to grow the legume on 100-300 acres and pick the seeds from them to distribute to over 100 small-scale farmers and at least five large-scale farmers every month,” Samuel said.
Based in Nakuru, he not only supplies farmers in Kenya with the soil elixir, but the good message of sunn hemp has reached as far as Uganda, Tanzania, Congo, Burundi, and Ethiopia.
While a few of the farmers he works with grow it as a fodder crop for their livestock because it contains at least 15 per cent protein, most of the farmers use it as a rotation cover crop and green manure.
Related News: How farmers are employing hemp’s high to heal soils
Related News: Green legume manures saves farmers Sh3200 per acre in fertiliser costs
This means it is grown to protect and improve the soil not to be harvested.
Munge informed that most of the farmers who buy it are maize, wheat, and barley growers in Nyandarua and Mau Narok though he supplies it throughout the country and to other African farmers.
Flowering in just 60 days when it should be dug back into the soil, the drought-tolerant crop that grows in 200-4,300 mm of rain is planted after harvesting your main crop, a time when most farmers leave their soils bare.
Sunn hemp is a green fertiliser that can cut down chemical fertiliser use by a quarter while having no impact on the performance of your crops. A 2019 research done by KALRO showed that the maize planted after growing sunn hemp performed the same as when chemical fertilisers were used. This is because depending on the number of plants you grow, sunn hemp adds 50–130 kg of nitrogen, which is the most used nutrient in fertiliser by plants, per hectare in just two to three months.
For use as green manure, sunn hemp seeds which Samuel sells for Sh550-600 depending on the size of the order, are broadcasted at a seed rate of 18 to 22 kg per acre.
Sunn hemp grows quickly, flowering 60 days after sowing when the plant is 0.9–1.5 meters tall.
Related News: Best manure handling practices for maximum crop production
Related News: African farmers fix sick soils planting legumes
If it is left longer it starts to use the nitrogen it left in the soil to form seeds and its stems become woody, making it harder to dig them into the soil.
To add it to the soil it is first cut down and then dug into the soil at a depth of 10–15 centimeters. Farmers should ideally wait two to three weeks before planting the next crop to allow the plant to rot and release nitrogen.
Samuel Munge: 0728400747