Baringo County has immense agricultural potential not forgetting the largely untapped beef and dairy industry that has been in existence for decades.
The county is home to one of the only two running cotton ginneries in the country. The County has all the ecological zones hence a variety of soils supporting a wide variety of investments. This has seen Coffee growing in the high altitude areas to sisal plantations in the lower regions of Mogotio.
Baringo county can feed the nation if viable schemes such as Perkerra National Irrigation Board (NIB) and the tail ends schemes, Sandai, Eldume, Kamoskoi, Mukutani (cluster scheme), Embosos, Losekem, Salabani, Musiro, Ilmaine, and Chemeron irrigation scheme which is under Kerio Valley Development Authority among others are expanded and run to full potential.
The County, however, is facing a major problem after locusts invaded the county two weeks ago and are now ravaging the plants. According to the news that ran on one of the local TV stations, NTV, Residents of Koriema village in Baringo County are a worried to the core after locusts invaded their farms and nearby forests about two weeks ago.
According to the residents in the affected area, locusts have attacked all the nearby trees and most of them which were green before are no more and residents are now worried that their crops in the farms are the next after the trees.
Farmers say that they were expecting a good harvest this year but the advent of locusts has killed all their hopes. They are now calling on the County Government, in conjunction with the National Government to come in and rescue them before all the crops are destroyed.
This comes a few months after the neighbouring Uasin Gishu farmers were affected by their maize turning yellow upon germination in what was termed as the effects of the subsidized fertilizer given to them by the government.
In Trans Nzoia County, one often referred to as the basket of Kenya farmers who are harvesting beans at the moment are counting losses as the harvest is not as it has been over the years. They are blaming the disappearance of rain as soon as their beans flowered something that affected production.