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Hilary Benn's diary February 2009
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn wrote this diary during his trip to Kenya and Antarctica. He attended the Governing Council of the United Nations Environmental Programme in Nairobi and visited a number of schemes and projects; he then went to Antarctica to look at climate change research there.
Tuesday 17 Feb 2009
We only got four and a half hours sleep on the plane to Nairobi. But this was more than made up for by the sight of the Rift Valley – the great plain created by the pulling apart of two tectonic plates – and the extinct volcano, Mount Longonot. We were flying to Lake Naivasha, and the pilot made a tight turn so we could get a good view of the hippos and pink flamingos before putting down on a narrow grass airstrip. We had come to visit Homegrown – one of the rose growing companies that are clustered around the lake. A couple of weeks ago Bob Watson, Defra’s Chief Scientist, was talking to me about integrated pest management. “Basically it’s getting good bugs to eat bad bugs” explained Bob. Well, Homegrown – working with a Kenyan technology company – are certainly on the case, and it was enormously impressive.
They breed good bugs, mites and fungi and use ingenious ways of harvesting them. They grow rows of plants and introduce the bad bugs. Once they’ve done their damage, they then bring in the good bugs who eat them. Having filled themselves up, their natural instinct is to make their way to the top of the plant to await the wind (they can’t fly) to blow them to the next plant. So to help them, they put streamers running down and out from the stick in the middle of the plant, which provides walkways for the bugs. And finally – and this is the hi-tech bit - they catch them using a plastic jar upside down on the top of the stick. Clever eh! One jar of tiny red mites which can then be used by farmers to protect their plants. Using nature in this way has helped them to reduce their use of pesticides and chemicals significantly.
The other thing they do – mindful of the problem of water quality in the lake – is to clean waste water using reed beds. The water takes three weeks to flow from bed to bed, while plants, natural filtration and sunlight do their work. The result? Well water turns from dirty brown to sparkling clear, and just to show his confidence in the system, the energetic farm manager knelt down and drank the clean water! We declined to follow his example but it was still very impressive.
Indeed, that was my overriding impression of the visit. Growing roses is an intensive business and just 48 hours pass between snipping the stems in Kenya and putting them on the shelves in the UK. It provides jobs, export income and brings smiles to our faces as we buy beautiful roses. And yet it is a business that needs to sustain the lake on which it depends. As the Scottish born conservationist John Muir put it “When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world”.
And then sadly, as the thunder rumbled and the rain drops fell, it was time to go. The plane rattled down the airstrip like a turbo-charged shopping trolley and we were away. I must confess that I could not resist ringing home just to be able to say that I was calling from the clouds above the Rift Valley. It sure beats “Hi, I’m on the train!”.
Hilary Benn
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Page last modified: 21 February 2009
Page published: 19 February 2009