Climate-related farmer suicides surging in eastern Kenya

KENYA – Eastern Kenya is seeing a surge in suicides after farmers hit by unusual weather and unable to repay loans are taking their lives, police say.

As many as 2 000 people in Kenya’s Eastern Province, many of them farmers, have committed suicide in the past year, up from a normal suicide rate of 300 per year in the area, Kenyan police records show.The deaths come as eastern Kenya has experienced extremely poor crop harvests as a result of prolonged drought and unusual rainfall at harvest time, which has led to contamination of maize harvests with aflatoxins, produced by fungus that grows in wet grain.The crop failures are devastating farmers, who since 2008 have taken out tens of millions of dollars in farm loans with their land as security, and now worry they could lose everything.’They used their farms as collateral to get the huge loans which they were to service regularly. Many ended up not even being able to feed their families when the crop harvests failed,’ said Joseph Kimeu, regional manager of the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) in Eastern Kenya.The board, an arm of the Kenyan agriculture ministry that buys and stores grain as an emergency stockpile for the country, last year declined to buy the little maize harvested by farmers in the area as it had been poisoned by aflatoxins after harvest-period rains.John Mukele, a psychologist who practices in the region, said he has seen a surge of farmers traumatised by losing their crops or their land.’I am receiving an average of more than 13 farmers who come for counseling at my office each weekday. Many have even become alcoholics and deserted their families as a result of frustrations. Some even tell me that suicide is only option. I always have to do my part to prevent tragedy,’ he said.Temperatures up to four degrees Celsius warmer than normal in recent years in Kenya’s Eastern Province have affected crop harvesting patterns and influenced planting seasons.That has severely affected repayment rates on bank loans. In 2008, Equity Bank, one of Kenya’s largest private banks in terms of assets, set up a partnership with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to give loans to more than 2.5 million Kenyan farmers and 15 000 agricultural enterprises.So far the partnership has given loans totalling more than US$50 million.AGRA, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, aims to assist smallholder farmers in Africa and improve the continent’s often precarious food security.But while farmers in some parts of Kenya have repaid their loans, almost none of the 7 000 farmers in Kenya’s Eastern Province who received loans have reportedly been able to make repayments.Statistics from various hospitals in Kenya’s Eastern Province show that hardly a week passes without eight suicides in each of the 29 major hospitals in that part of the country. The numbers could be higher since most suicides are kept secret and not recorded.Suicide remains illegal in Kenya and a survivor can face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.Doctors at Mutomo District Hospital in Kitui said the hospital’s morgue is overflowing with dead bodies as a result of the suicide surge, and its beds are full of survivors of suicide attempts.Last year’s drought left more than 10 million Kenyans hungry, according to the government, and forced the country to depend on donor aid and cheap maize imports from South Africa.Kenya’s government has come under increasing pressure as a result of the suicide surge, with some farmers and experts blaming corruption in the distribution of relief food for worsening problems in the area, and others citing a failure to crack down on sellers of substandard and infertile seed as an additional problem for struggling farmers. – Nampa-Reuters

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