By Gitonga Njeru
KITUI, Kenya (AlertNet) Â? 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 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.
Aflatoxins, if consumed, can cause severe liver damage, and are considered highly carcinogenic.
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.
FARMS USED AS LOAN COLLATERAL
"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 traumatized 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 4 degrees Celsius warmer than normal in recent years in Kenya's Eastern Province have affected crop harvesting patterns and influenced planting seasons.
"The rains are coming when farmers are getting ready to harvest; sometimes the rains affect the maize by releasing fatal toxins into the maize shortly before it is harvested and consumed. The toxins in turn also affect the soil and future production becomes difficult for the farmer," said Mary Njenga, a Kenyan agricultural scientist and researcher.
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 $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.
MASS DEFAULT ON LOANS
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.
An additional group of eastern Kenyan maize farmers borrowed a total of $400,000 from the government to purchase seeds from local companies, using their property as collateral to secure the loans. Most of those loans have also not been repaid, bank officials said.
AGRA was reportedly working with Equity Bank to delay or avoid repossession of the properties of debt-ridden farmer and find other solutions to the problem.
But James Mwangi, the CEO of Equity Bank, said some repossessions are likely.
"We have not yet repossessed the land owned by the defaulters but we will have to recover our money one way or the other," he warned.
"We have denied second loans to those who have a poor repayment record. We will have to take properties which were used as collateral since no repayments have been done. Some farmers have not even contacted us to negotiate with us the way forward," Mwangi said.
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.
OVERFLOWING MORGUES
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.
"The hospital mortuary does not have enough refrigerators or other storage facilities for the dead bodies that are frequently brought here. For the patients who survive suicide attempts, the bed capacity is only 130. The demand for medical services far outstrips what we can offer," said Stefan Karlsson, a Swedish Rotary Club doctor who works at the facility.
Mukele, the psychologist in the region, said some suicidal farmers have harmed their families as well.
"Many farmers have even killed their own wives and children in the belief that they should not live in misery after their family land has been taken away. After killing their loved ones, they take away their life eventually. Other farmers have attempted suicide and they have found themselves in the wrong arm of the law since suicide remains illegal here in Kenya," Mukele said.
Seventy percent of farmers in Eastern Kenya own less than three acres of land according to figures from the agriculture ministry, and most of the land is rain fed.
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.
"Climate change continues to affect food production in Kenya and it is here to stay. As a country we have depended so much on rain for our crops to grow. We have ignored the new available agricultural production technologies to boost food security and the confidence of farmers," said Jimnah Mbaru, chairman of the National Cereals and Produce Board.
Jane Mutua, who turned 20 earlier this year, is now a single mother of one child after her partner, who she hoped to marry one day, committed suicide. She is left with a young baby to take care of and is unsure whether the lenders will take away the land they are living on and farming.
"I am not sure who will pay the school fees for my young son once he reaches school-going age," Mutua said.
She said that lawyers had been appointed to represent her family in court to try and save the land from being taken away by lenders.
FAMILIES DYING AS WELL
Another farmer, Kennedy Mutiso, committed suicide in February, killing his wife and three children as well, after failing to repay a loan of $5,000 given to him two years ago through the Equity Bank program. His elderly parents are still to come in terms with his death.
"The issue of the land is in court. We have been provided a lawyer by the government since we cannot afford one ourselves," said Naomi Mutiso, Kennedy's mother.
She claimed some of their neighbors had also committed suicide after receiving unviable seeds and then being unable to repay loans.
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.
The government has been blamed by several organizations for not investigating seed companies that may have sold inappropriate, poor quality or outdated seed to farmers.
"The government has in the past been blamed for allowing companies to sell farmers fake seeds and letting criminals get away. Some of the seeds in the Kenyan economy were developed more than 20 years ago" and have been stored in warehouses all that time, said Stanley Karuga, an agricultural economist and former advisor to the Kenyan government.
The problem now is that the seeds, even if fertile, are no longer appropriate for changing climate conditions, he said.
Gitonga Njeru is a science journalist based in Nairobi.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
