The National Cereals and Produce Board depots are yet to start buying maize a week after President Uhuru Kenyatta issued a directive.
On Monday, farmers protested at the Eldoret NCPB depot.
More than 150 lorries and tractors lined up to deliver maize but they were not allowed in.
“The lies seem to have started again. We are wondering why the people in charge are not implementing the President's order," Director of the Kenya Farmers Association Kipkorir Menjo said.
He said Agriculture
Cabinet Secretary
Mwangi Kiunjuri and the cereals board
management should open the depots.
The delay is unfair since farmers are supposed to start preparing for planting next month, Menjo said.
Strategic Food Reserve Fund board chairman Dr Noah Wekesa, who was in Eldoret on Saturday, promised farmers the depots would be open up this week.
“We are preparing to start buying maize in an orderly manner so as not to repeat past mistakes," Wekesa said.
Farmer Paul Mursin wants the President to sack the people ignoring his orders.
On January 10, President Uhuru told the NCPB to buy maize for farmers at Sh2,500 for a 90kg bag.
Maize growers asked Treasury CS Henry Rotich to release money to the NCPB to buy their crop.
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Governors in the North Rift have also asked the government to suspend the sale of 1.7 million bags of maize at the NCPB depots to millers.
Instead, they want millers to buy maize directly from farmers. The government has said it will sell maize to millers at Sh1,600 per 90kg bag.
Uasin Gishu Governor Jackson Mandago, said if the NCPB sells maize to millers, farmers will lack a market.
Mandago, who is the chairman of the North Rift Economic Bloc, said
farmers in the region have more than 18 million bags of maize.
North Rift governors have asked the Agriculture ministry to convene a meeting to discuss the sale plan before it is rolled out by the NCPB.
Uhuru ordered the NCPB to sell maize to millers to decongest silos in readiness for the purchase of fresh produce from farmers.
The NCPB will buy only two million bags of maize from farmers. The board is still holding more than 3.5 million bags purchased from farmers last year and most of its stores are full.
“We should agree on how these stock will be sold. If millers get 1.7 million bags from the NCPB, yet the board will buy only two million bags from farmers, where will the other 16 million bags of maize be taken?” Mandago asked.
The board will open 15 centers in centres in high production areas, which include Uasin Gishu, Trans Nzoia and Nandi.
Farmers’ representative Christopher Kolum wants the board to buy four million and not two million bags of maize.