Past development plans

Oil seed farming - G4 Industries

In 2009 G4 Industries, a British oil seed farming company had proposed to grow irrigated crambe, castor and sunflower in some 28,000 ha in the Tana Delta on the Wachu Ranch and had been granted the go-ahead by NEMA. However at the end of 2010 the company decided to pull out quoting reasons of poor soil quality, a marginal climate and, with climate change going the way it is, uncertainty about the future reliability of good climatic conditions for crop production. It also stated that an unreliable governance of the area by local and national authorities meant that working in the delta was too difficult.

TARDA rice irrigation project

The Tana Delta Irrigation Project (TDIP) involved the conversion of approximately 2000 hectares of fertile floodplain for commercial rice production between 1991 and 1999. It was implemented with assistance from the Japanese Government and managed by TARDA (Tana and Athi River Development Authority).  However, the El Niño floods of 1997 destroyed a large area of the crops and the project was never relaunched.

A number of preliminary studies were made of the project site, which are available for download here:

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