Kenya will soon become a net importer of maize. In maize-producing counties of Western and North Rift, acreage previously dedicated to the crop is declining rapidly. Farmers are turning their back on a crop that holds them and their land hostage. The problem is the alternative is not on the horizon yet. Now it’s a mixed bag of subsistence, tree and barley farming. Many are leasing farmland to green-housing agribusiness.
That a country can be deficient in its staple food mocks the annual ritual of restocking the abused strategic grain reserve. Food security is national security. When you undermine food security, you endanger the stability of a nation. It’s treason.
Hordes of hungry citizens are never containable. We must gather the courage to restructure the National Cereals and Produce Board or scrap it all together and allow the free market to determine maize production and marketing. We have done it with coffee and tea, where farmers own their produce. Why are we holding maize farmers hostage? No government since Independence has had the temerity to call those bent on sabotaging food security treasonous because farming and marketing is lucrative for pro-regime oligarchs.
The playground is the scandal-prone NCPB, which is in the news again for conning farmers. Its silos are full but farmers are stuck with maize. From whom has the NCPB been buying maize, then? The board is accused of spending Sh6 billion to buy and store Uganda imports by middlemen at the expense of Kenyan farmers. It has suspended purchase “for investigations”, not on import cartels who have fleeced the agency but to ‘verify’ whether farmers grew the crop they want to offload. In the board’s logic, the fraudsters are the same farmers desperate to sell maize to the NCPB.
The cartels have already carted away their share of the Sh6 billion leaving the NCPB coffers empty. It’s customary for Kenyan public officials caught with their hands in the cookie jar to parry blame illogically. It’s therefore not strange that “investigations” are being launched on farmers as a ploy to wish away the theft.
The Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture visited and declared the matter of farmers camping at NCPB stores “should be investigated”. Yet Agriculture CS Mwangi Kiunjuri had preceded the committee to offer purchase assurance. The irony is as the NCPB “investigates”, farmer’s recourse is to sell to the same fraudsters at throwaway prices who will turn in millions from reselling to the NCPB.
For too long, if the NCPB wasn’t supplying seeds and fertiliser to farmers on time, it would be supplying fake seeds and poor quality or adulterated fertiliser. The NCPB capture is total; from sourcing inputs, to delivery and purchase of produce. If you aren’t an oligarch insider, too bad, membership is reserved, even on the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture.
At the height of the scandalous late supply of fertiliser in the 2015-16 planting season, it became obvious how the NCPB supply chain is rotten. Apart from the delay in delivering fertiliser to farms under the excuse that heavy rains made it difficult for enough quantities to be transported from Mombasa, the oligarchs intercepted it to cause The NCPB capture is total; from sourcing inputs, to delivery and purchase of produce. If you aren’t an oligarch insider, too bad, membership is reserved, even on the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture.
an artificial shortage. What was not available at the NCPB depots was readily available in the black market at unaffordable prices. NCPB managers were cited in the scam.
To save face, government announced the opening of a factory in Eldoret to ease access to cheap fertiliser. Interestingly what exists now is a repacking outfit whose product is unaffordable. The NCPB still imports fertiliser! President Uhuru Kenyatta has included food security among the “Big Four”. This will not happen without stimulating agriculture. The stimulant is assuring farmers that they will have access to affordable inputs and a lucrative produce market. That won’t do with the behemoth NCPB in the way.
Agriculture is a devolved function. For food security to be realised, the NCPB must be dismembered and primary production functions such as sourcing farm inputs and budgets should go the counties. The national government should only retain the overseer policy function and securing food reserves.