LAIKIPIA, Kenya (AlertNet) - A piercing stench filled the cool breeze on the foothills of Mount Kenya.

Then a lone herdsman drove his only remaining herd of cattle past the source of the smell, a carcass, in a desperate search for pasture and water as Kenya's worst drought in a decade bites.

"I don't know what to do. A few months ago I had 120 cattle but now I am only left with 56," said Grewan Lasakut, who had trekked over 40 km (25 miles) to try and feed and water his animals.

He left his village of Doldol, down on the plains of Kenya's Rift Valley Province, hoping for greener pastures in the mountains after a prolonged drought parched the land and dried most water sources back home.

But his journey, like that of most cattle keepers here, has brought little but a trail of carcasses. His remaining cattle were too thin to fetch a decent price at market or too weak to produce milk for his family.

Crop failures, and higher food prices since unrest followed a disputed election last year, have led to widespread food shortages.

The World Food Programme, the U.N. food agency, says Kenya is suffering its worst drought in 10 years after four years of failed rains.

It says that this year alone, an extra one million Kenyans will have to depend on food aid on top of the 2.5 million already doing so, meaning one in 10 Kenyans will be relying on handouts.

Dr Mwaura Kiguru, Laikipia's veterinary officer, told AlertNet the lack of water was taking a dreadful toll on herders in the highlands northeast of Nairobi.

"Drought is destroying pastoralist communities in these parts of Kenya because when the cattle come to the cold, high altitude areas they easily die of pneumonia and tick fever," he said while counting fresh carcasses of cattle.

"We have had cases where herdsmen have committed suicide because they lose everything, as in hundreds of cattle."

The crisis is also hitting households previously thought to have reliable food sources. Laikipia is dotted with patches of small gardens with dried crops.

Beatrice Paula, a single mother of five, has to queue up at a World Food Programme distribution point in Laiga village after her luck ran out.

"All the crops we planted this season dried up because we got no rain at all and now food is so expensive it is leaving us dependant on food handouts," she said.

Kenya relies on one staple crop - maize - which takes a long time to mature and is highly vulnerable to erratic rain patterns. The WFP said Kenyans needed to change to more drought-resistant crops like sorghum.

According to the agency's partial assessment, some parts of Kenya have experienced over 70 percent crop failure, cutting maize supplies in the country by nearly one third.

Reserves were already low after the years of poor rains and the disruption by the post-election violence in which 1,300 people died last year.

"This part of Kenya would normally need about 800 to 1,200 millilitres of rainfall a year, but this year some places in Kenya got zero rainfall," said Dr Kiguru.

The years of poor rain have led to a sharp decline in food stocks and also contributed to a doubling of food prices in a year, according to the U.N.

"Many Kenyans are now eating one meal a day or going without food," said a WFP spokeswoman.

The government has called the military in to help distribute food in many parts of the country as the WFP appealed for more donations from abroad to pay for the extra food it will need to buy.

Second picture caption: Grace Muthoni, a Kenyan teenager, looks at withered maize she planted three weeks before in Laikipia district where drought has destroyed most crops.
REUTERS/by Frank Nyakairu

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