Farmers’ organisations will boost agriculture

By John Mutunga

Kenya: As devolution takes shape in Kenya, the unity and organization of our farmers and its impact on the promised agrarian revolution has been put on sharp focus.

 A case for the revival of the cooperative movement has been put across with the hindsight that many countries that grew before ours simply put their farmers into cooperatives and ensured they worked. 

In our case, we have worked hard to kill our agricultural cooperatives, but with the devolved system and the increasing appetite for taxes by the County Governments, time has come to revive them. 

Counties that will take the revival of the farmers’ cooperatives in their lists of priorities, and organize them, into institutions/legal entities for collaborative action through shared vision, will grow faster.

Apart from Nairobi and Mombasa, no other county in Kenya will have faster, more resilient and reliable economic growth outside agriculture. It is the way they interpret and cause investments in agriculture that will determine their growth and development rates. 

The Kenya National Farmers Federation (KENAFF) has the vision of a better Kenyan farmer that can only be triggered by collective activities and has engaged in actions to bring the farmers throughout the country together. Simplistically put, the greater majority of the African farmers are smallholders and fairly unorganized. Unfortunately they own most of the land and therefore there cannot be any development initiative that avoids them and succeeds

Farmer organisations holds the key to rural and national development.

First it is noteworthy that most of the developed countries grew from agriculture. Agriculture will continue to be the bed-rock of the Kenyan economy. Most Counties will depend on the agricultural sector to drive their economies. That is why it is crucial to for the county governments, under the devolved system to develop focused agricultural agendas that will catapult the economic and social development of the counties. 

Secondly, the agricultural GDP has twice as much power to reduce as any other GDP. The majority of Kenyans depend on the agricultural sector for food and employment while the economy depends on agriculture for industrialization and foreign exchange earnings among others. Any significant change in the agricultural sector has the potential to affect the majority of Kenyans and once the GDP improves, the livelihoods of many Kenyans will automatically improve.

Thirdly, the potential of the country lies with the smallholder farmers since they own land. With targeted organisation and eventual empowerment through capacity building, farm production can escalate to heights that will completely transform farm productivity in the county.

Fourthly, there is need for improved and better targeted collaboration with other actors and partners.

Organising farmers into groups will ensure that there is improved productivity of agro-products, which in essence will draw the attention of investors and development partners to such groups so as to inform on new products, technologies, processes, methodologies and innovations as well as other forms of support. 

The fifth benefit is the economies of scale through collective input procurement and marketing. Organized farmers will have the capacity to pool resources together for purposes of procuring inputs together, thus cutting operational costs and therefore increasing profits.

The sixth benefit is improved articulation of issues through lobbying by having one strong voice. Organized farmers are able to engage in focused and strategic lobbying especially with government structures responsible for policy making that define their operations.

This will ensure that the policies being put in place for farmers are supportive and not suppressive. A lot goes wrong because the farmers’ voice is weak, and ignorance reigns amongst them.

The seventh benefit is enhanced efficiency and effectiveness in accessing and delivery of products and services. The eighth benefit is providing a platform that promotes sharing of experiences, knowledge and ideas. Learning is essential for development.

This is because new ideas, technologies including innovations emanate from learning experiences. Bringing different farmers together pools experiences, ideas, knowledge and skills that the farmers best learn from each other. 

The writer is an agribusiness advisor, and CEO of the Kenya National Farmers’ Federation (Kenaff)