Climate-related farmer suicides surging in eastern 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 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.