These MPs are flogging a dead donkey

By Ibrahim Ndamwe

For decades, politicians from sugarcane growing areas have used the cane crop as a campaign tool. Normally, the politician who shouts the loudest about forcing an increase in the price of sugarcane — and bribes most — wins the parliamentary ticket.

As a political strategy, the politicians lead farmers’ demonstrations against the local sugar company in a bid to raise the amount of money paid to farmers. It happens all the time in Mumias, Mohoroni, Sony, Awendo — name it. And it is absolutely futile.

If these politicians really cared about the plight of their people, they would take a hard look at happenings in central Kenya. Here, farmers are uprooting coffee and tea and planting maize and horticultural produce instead. As one farmer memorably put it, his tea bushes were a donkey and he was getting rid of it for a cow that produces milk.

Kenya is the only country in the world where sugarcane is grown on little patches of land. And with land being sub-divided every generation, cane is now grown on plots as tiny as a quarter of an acre. The economies of scale simply don’t add up.

Worse is that with all the land taken up by cane, the livestock sector is virtually dead.

Empty Stomachs

No one grows maize and vegetables anymore. In a desperate bid to increase land under cultivation, wetlands, marshes and riverine forests have been converted to cane farms. Streams are drying up. The people are hungry and poor because the rapidly diminishing cane earnings, which come after two years, cannot sustain their needs.

Of what use is cane on your farm when the maize granary and your stomach are empty? Like their central Kenya counterparts, it’s time cane farmers got rid of this donkey. After all, there is cheaper sugar in Brazil and Sudan anyway.