The agriculture sector has been undergoing a lot of reforms in the past decade because agriculture is one of the sectors with the potential to turn around the faltering economy.
Tigania West MP John Kanyuithia Mutunga, chairman of the Agriculture and Livestock Development Committee, talked to our reporter Agatha Ngotho on why the country needs to transition to sustainable food production, responding to global change and safeguarding food and nutritional security.
He explains what government is doing to ensure this happens.
Q: Agriculture is a key focus in Kenya Kwanza government. Please elaborate.
As members of the Agriculture and Livestock Development Committee of the National Assembly, we are aiding in improving one of the low-productive sectors.
My background is in agriculture and developmental science and now as an MP, I am a driving force in supporting the agricultural reform agenda.
Kenya Kwanza has about give focus areas. One of them is agriculture which has a detailed reform agenda.
Others are the micro, small and medium enterprises and affordable housing to increase the number of houses and reduce the cost of rent and mortgage so people will be able to buy their own homes.
Kenya Kwanza is also putting a lot of effort into ensuring that every person in Kenya attains the best possible health services.
Another area is the digital superhighway and creative economy, which are basically in the digitisation process. This looks at how to digitise everything in the country and this is happening across the government agencies. For example, the HustlerFund is almost 100 percent digitised.
Q: Has the Government invested enough in agriculture and what areas need more investment to make the sector more productive?
We have seen various investments in agriculture and the Government has deliberately decided to invest in agriculture. As a committee we are looking at the many proposals. But we need to identity the best of the best.
If you want to increase production, there are three things we focus on as agricultural scientists. First we make sure we get good seeds and we have a serious investment framework for the seed industry. We have the Kenya Seed Company, which has worked closely with our researchers in coming up with good varieties, especially in cereals. Other partners participating in the seed sector have ensured we have quality seeds and brought down the cost. With the advent of GMOs, we are also doing research in that area.
A second area of focus is soil health. We have our National Agriculture Laboratories, which do regional-based soil sampling, testing and advising. Before government takes a decision on what kind of fertiliser should be promoted in a given area, for instance, scientists and farmers must understand the soils. If you are a large-scale investor, you will need to understand the soils first so you know what kind of fertiliser to use.
Kenya has been using DAP planting fertiliser for the longest time. Recently, the government realised DAP is not the only one required, based on the different ecological soil health requirements. The government has advised the trials of the 17:17:17 fertiliser that is nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium at a17 percent level within that particular package. So when you use triple 17, you will be supplying the three key nutrients that the plant needs at about the same rate.
The third issue we need to focus on to improve production and productivity is the water supply. Water is the key, you can have the best seed and best soil but without sufficient water you may not be able to get the yields you require.
Kenya suffers from water deficiency during the rainy period. The rainy seasons are short and in the advent of climate change, they will become shorter. The rains are also erratic and very erosive, causing soil erosion.
To ensure sufficient water supply, government is investing hugely in mega dams, huge dams to contain the river water from getting into the ocean. The ocean does not need fresh water, in fact, fresh water in the ocean is a pollutant. This is because it brings in a lot of plants that are foreign. Rain water should be used for irrigation and Government is doing this.
In the Kenya Kwanza plan, we have about 100 mega dams and we have applied for more than 500 smaller earth dams, which are about 110,000 cubic metres. The mega dams contain millions of cubic meters. The other investment is in terms of water pans – the small household-owned water harvesting structures spread across the country; thousands of them are planned already.
The Ministry of Water has been working on this and a few dams have been opened. We are locating them on a regional basis and also initiating excavation. There is a lot of investment in agriculture.
On issues of crop protection, disease and pest control, and crop husbandry management, this has been left to the investors [the farmers], while the government comes in to do other major issues.
Q: What are some key areas in the agricultural reform agenda?
The Kenya kwanza plan has a huge reform agenda with about six areas of serious focus. One is providing working capital to farmers. This is a key area where we are seeing a lot of investments, money passing through to the farmers. We have many projects within the ministries that are donor-funded and come in as loans, and the design of the project that needs development is negotiated through bilateral agreement.
Most of these projects are being implemented by the counties and money is passing to the counties as conditional grants and they are given with the formula to utilise the money based on donor negotiations. We have several donors, including the World Bank, IMF, International Fund for Agriculture Development , The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and others.
They have programmes within the ministry that are giving farmers money. The cash handling comes in terms of organising farmers to help increase the scale of production and selling. The more money/crops they sell, the more they produce and the more costly it is for the-small scale farmers.
Working capital is also being supplied to the agriculture sector through cooperative movements. For instance, in the coffee subsector, we have seen two tranches of money being sent. We have we have Sh2 billion initially set aside by the last government for the Coffee Cherry Fund. The money has not been utilised to a large extent and close to Sh700 million has been used so far. Recently, in the last supplementary budget, an additional Sh4 billion was also released to the coffee subsector. This is money channeled to the farm to help farmers deal with their issues.
In the sugar industry the government also provided money to redeem farmers from long-term indebtedness. There are five sugar companies the government has decided to support and this was managed by my committee. These include Miwani, Muhoroni, Chemilil, Sony and Nzoia. We identified the debts that included money owed to the staff working in these sugar factories, money owed by the sugar factories to farmers and then we have money owed to the Government in the form of non-remitted dues. We also have money also owed to the KRA in non-remitted taxes.
The government wrote off the debts that are owed to them of Sh117 billion. It also provided about Sh1.7 billion to pay off the debts. The money owed to the staff will be factored into the negotiation process of those who will lease the factories so that no one loses their job. I believe they will negotiate with whoever is likely to lease and look for a modality of paying off the workers so that we have a retention formula that will help avoid loss of jobs.
We have also seen investment in the revival of some of the industries including the Rivatex textile company. The government has been buying and distributing seeds to the farmers to be able to support them in providing raw materials for these industries. For example, we have also seen money being put into the cotton industry through distribution of cottonseeds to the farmers. This is tied up with revival of the previous cotton ginneries that will process the cotton into lint, and all the way to apparel. This will help in development of the produce we sell under the African Growth and Opportunity Act trade agreement with the US. These are some of the areas that the Kenya Kwanza government is planning to do.
In our next edition, Mutunga will share more on the agriculture reform agenda and what the government is doing to promote this.
