Genetically engineering of crops is technology too valuable to ignore. It is the key to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s quest to ensure food security and nutrition in Kenya.
Whether it is two million bags of maize as stated by the chairman of the Strategic Food Reserve or 19 million as stated by Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mwangi Kiunjuri on Wednesday, the fact still remains, we have a deficit.
Contributing factors could be global warming which has led to a change of weather patterns or even pests and diseases which are a great threat to all crops. GMOs are known to be pest resistant and herbicide tolerant. This offers advantages to farmers since they save costs which they would otherwise have used to weed their farms and buy chemicals to ensure the protection of crops from pests and diseases.
Second generation GMOs are increased in nutrition serving fully the need for food security and nutrition in the country. Also, crops that are able to survive adverse weather, for instance, Katumani Maize, could serve best our unpredictable weather brought about by industrialisation factors which we cannot do away with.
Hence, the government needs to work to build the country’s local capacity to manage acquisition and monitoring of genetically manufactured crops which will be made possible by creating legal systems to enforce and punish transgression of laws. We don’t have to import maize every year yet we have several counties producing millions of bags of maize.
If the farmers from these areas are provided with GMO technology, they would even double their produce and keep the country from spending on a commodity it should be earning billions from. This would also save the nation from starvation.
Nairobi
