The country will not achieve food security if the national government does not devolve all agricultural functions to county governments, the Council of Governors said yesterday.
Funding for the sector must also be increased, the governors said and asked the national government to stop clinging to some agricultural functions.
CoG chairman Wycliffe Oparanya said some officers in the Agriculture ministry encroached on devolved functions like operations of the National Cereals and Produce Board, the Kenya Dairy Board, the Agriculture and Food Authority, and administration of inputs subsidy.
“We are all in consensus that the current mode of procuring and distributing of farm inputs has been highly inefficient and ineffective.
“The bulk procurement of fertiliser does not match soil and crop preparedness and hence inconvenience farmers,” said Oparanya during a meeting of CoG and Agriculture CS Mwangi Kiunjuri in Mombasa.
The Kakamega governor said the farmers’ input subsidy programme needs to be restructured.
CoG Agriculture committee chair Muthomi Njuki, who is the Tharaka-Nithi governor, said all pending agriculture regulations including tea, coffee, sugarcane, dairy industry, nuts and oil, food industry and horticulture regulations, should be fast-tracked.
Njuki said the counties need additional financing for the Big Four agenda, especially in the food security pillar.
The Affordable Housing pillar has been given an additional Sh21 billion.
“Food security should be next in the additional funding because counties are facing financial challenges,” he said. This will help in moving the country from rain-fed agriculture to water-fed agriculture.
Makueni's Kivutha Kibwana called for a closer working relationship between the national government and the county governments should work in the agricultural sector.
Kibwana said agriculture was the foundation for counties’ prosperity and called for fast-tracking of the formation and implementation of policy frameworks for effective mitigation of climate change challenges to ensure food security.
“Counties need to collate expenditure on agriculture so as to know the total investment in the sector by both the national and the county governments.”
Kiunjuri acknowledged there is a need for increased funding in the agricultural sector as it drives the socio-economic transformation of the country.
“This (transformation) will not be achieved if the financing of agriculture is not increased,” the CS said.
He said it is not possible to revolutionise agriculture without resources as envisioned in the Agriculture Sector Growth Strategy to be implemented in the next 10 years.
He said both levels of government need to work together to achieve food security. “The right hand should support the left hand.”
Oparanya said the national government needs to stop withholding funds at Kilimo House.
He said that the Controller of Budget reports show a glaring disparity in the allocation of funds in the agriculture sector.
For instance, in the 2018/2019 fiscal year, out of the equalisation share of Sh302 billion, all the 47 counties got only Sh24 billion, yet the Agriculture ministry had been allocated Sh46.9 billion.
