Beech (1911) noted that the Chok were a "purely agricultural people, cultivating millet and eleusine grain grown in the cold air of the summit and possibly a little tobacco."Beech M.W.H, The Suk - Their Language and Folklore. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1911 p.4 The "millet [was] grown on the fertile and well watered flats at the base of the Elgeyo escarpment, and [was] watered by means of irrigation, while eleusine grain (was) grown high upon the hill sides and was dependent on rain". The irrigation system as Beech noted, "is most ingenious, and its original construction must have required a vast amount of toil and patience".Beech M.W.H, The Suk - Their Language and Folklore. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1911 p.15 MacDonald who came across an agricultural 'Suk' village during the last decade of the nineteenth century described a similar subsistence pattern.
