The Chief Officer for Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Janerose Tioko led her team today in making an extensive tour of food security projects at Katilu in Turkana South.

At Simaelele, the team did monitoring and evaluation of the Drought Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Programme(DRSLP) with a lot of focus on the canal intake, where water is channeled to the farms.

Farmers raised concern over poor irrigation infrastructure that inhibited water flow which they said, had affected food production for the past years.

CCO Tioko said the County government would consider allocating funds for additional intake with the earth canal to join the existing conveyance system to provide Irrigation water throughout the year to the Scheme.

She also informed the farmers that her Department had written to USAID Nawiri to ask for support in bush clearing of 133 acres of land, as part of the Government’s effort to expand acreage for crop production.

The Agriculture team, which was accompanied by area MCA Etubon Samal, also did an inspection of Kaloyapar Orchard, which is a project for FY’2022/23.

She said, was impressed with the work and plans to revitalise the orchard farm.

They also toured Katilu Irrigation schemes and interacted with farmers, some of whom were involved in the production of high-value crops that required market linkages.

Sub-County Irrigation Officers; Oloo Samwel(Turkana South), Hillary Saina(Loima), and Charles Ekeno(TurkanaCentral) as well as Turkana South Sub-County Agricultural Officer Francis Emuto and Sub-County Crop Officer Lucy Angiror were present.