Schools should stop growing food & focus on education

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

09 December 2018

Is it a good idea for boarding school to grow their own food? How much land would a school need to produce enough for its students?

One of the schools that I am associated with (through scholarship, not ownership) tried growing Sukuma wiki (kales). The project was abandoned after the principal realised that it took too much of his time and yet it did not produce meaningful quantities to make noticeable difference in food expenditure.

Another school that I am associated with has a fish pond courtesy of the ministry of fisheries. It gets 3,000 fingerlings which take about 8 months to mature. The school has 1,800 pupils, so, they eat the fish only twice a year!

The jury is still out on whether this is making any noticeable difference in the health of the children. I have heard stories that fish is supposed to make people more intelligent. But twice a year…?

The third school that I am associated with has about 750 pupils. Information in its annual budget shows that it buys 191 bags of maize every year to for students’ lunch. It also purchases 42,000kg of maize flour (equivalent to 466 bags of maize) for making the pupils’ supper. This makes a total of 657 bags of this staple grain.

A very efficient farmer can produce about 40 bags per acre per year. However, Kenya’s national average is about 9 bags per acre. This is actually one of the worst places in the world to grow maize! But that’s a story for another day.

Taking the middle ground of about 20 bags per acre, it turns out that the school with 750 pupils would need to cultivate and plant maize on about 33 acres of land. Now that’s not a small plot: think about the amount of labour and management required…

The school also buys 131 litres of milk every day for breakfast and break-time tea. Now a good cow (not the champion winners displayed at the agricultural show!) will produce about 15 litres daily. So, the school would need about ten cows.

 Now, imagine a school farming 33 acres of maize and keeping 10 cows: what level of farm management would it need in order to ensure adequate yields? I don’t think the principal would have the time to manage the farming projects as well as normal day-to-day running of the school.

Furthermore: it is wrong to assume that, by producing its own food, the school will save significant amounts of money. The reality is that farming requires a lot of inputs and, many times, farmers don’t make any profits.

Therefore, there is a high likelihood that the school might actually see its food costs going up instead of making savings! Looking at these numbers, it is clear that schools have no business trying to grow their own food. There are better and easier ways of saving money.