Kenya's senators encourage saving of cash crops from the brink

Senators have warned the country’s economic backbone is under threat because farmers have lost interest in cash crop farming, from which they derive little or no financial gain.

The senators, who were speaking during the Senate’s Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries committee meeting noted that brokers and middlemen have hijacked farming and impoverished farmers and said the sector can only recover through introduction of policies and laws that can make the farmer the chief beneficiary.

Senate Speaker Ekwe Ethuro (left) and Senator Kiraitu Murungi during the opening of a two-day retreat in Mombasa yesterday. (PHOTO: KELVIN KARANI/STANDARD)

The meeting came days after The Standard published an exclusive report detailing how cash crop farming has shrunk across the country and the predicament that this has caused farmers.

Committee Chairman Kiraitu Murungi said only radical changes in policy will make farmers the main beneficiaries and save the dwindling cash crop sector.

“Coffee, pyrethrum, cashew nuts and sugar-cane farming are no longer lucrative as they were in the past. The entire cash crop agriculture is on the verge of collapse. It is in the intensive care unit,” said Kiraitu.

He called for changes in policy that will focus on farmers as the primary beneficiaries as opposed to brokers who were currently reaping more from the produce.

 Massive subsidies

“No farmer is interested in coffee, tea, sugar or maize. They are only interested in one thing-money. Let’s generate polices which give farmers more money and the rest will follow,” said Kiraitu.

He urged the Government to invest in the sector, including giving massive subsidies to resuscitate cash crop farming.

We need a radical policy transformation in the sector, including massive subsidy as it happened in the 1960’s and 70’s,” said Kiraitu.

Kiraitu blamed the dipping morale to “paper” solutions that paid little concern to the welfare of farmers.

“We may talk and talk and come up with papers but unless farmers can make money from farming we will be doing zero work,” said Kiraitu.

Senate Speaker Ekwe Ethuro who was the chief guest during the workshop called on the stakeholders to make inputs to a bill that will enable farmers to benefit from farming that was no longer lucrative.

“We don’t want a situation where farmers uproot cash crops to plant crops they deem profitable than the cash crops,” said Ethuro.

Participants at the two-day workshop, which is also being attended by officers from the State Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, are discussing the proposed amendments to six bills.

These are National Agriculture Policy, National Tea Industry Policy, National Veterinary Policy, National Fisheries Management and Development Bill, 2014, Warehouse Receipts System Bill, 2015 and Regulations on Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources.