The Government over the next five years plans to transform the agriculture sector by increasing productivity in all priority value chains and also increasing land under irrigation.
Agriculture and Livestock Development Cabinet Secretary, Mithika Linturi, Friday said apart from this, the government will also look at affordable access to quality farm inputs as well as promoting public-private partnerships as an avenue for sustainable transformation and growth.
Speaking Friday during 76th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Kenya National Farmers’ Federation (KENAFF) in Kikuyu, Kiambu County, the CS noted that the Government has identified agriculture as the lead sector for economic transformation owing to its potential for high and quick returns on investments and this is evident and elaborated in the current Government’s manifesto.
“To produce the desired results, the Government has laid out a sound recovery and transformation plan geared towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 (No poverty) and 2 (Zero Hunger) in Kenya over the next five years,” Linturi said.
Kenyan agricultural sector, the CS noted, is mostly in the hands of smallholder farmers and that is where the KENAFF comes in.
The Ministry, Linturi promised, shall leverage the rich and solid KENAFF database of approximately 2 million farmers, to offer targeted services and interventions for farmers in their respective value chains and enterprise location.
This, he added, will make it convenient and effective to deploy the e-voucher programme, farm inputs subsidies as well as farmer sensitization, mobilization and capacity building.
He said the federation has always been and continues to be a partner in progress with the government in many projects and programmes over the past 15 years and therefore it is important that KENAFF support the government (at both levels) with establishing, developing and maintaining a farmers’ database disaggregated into value chains and wards.
“Given the federation’s long experience in registering farmers and her rich farmer database, KENAFF should work in concert with the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) and County governments to register farmers delineated into value chain specific and disaggregated to the ward level,” the CS said.
Linturi urged all the farmers attending the AGM to continue the noble duty of feeding the nation and sustaining the economy with pride as all work towards supporting the president’s agenda of leaving no one behind in a Kenyan economy and also through todays AGM theme dubbed “Empowering Farmers: The only way to the true Bottom-up” which resonates well with the government agenda.
Dr. Mwendwa Mailutha, KENAFF CEO said they were fast tracking strategies to enhance farmers’ health insurance so that they can be able to produce more yields noting that many a time farmers are not able to do farming due to poor health .
“We are negotiating with local insurers for affordable and friendly products as part of shielding farmers against poor health status and as a federation plan to sensitize, mobilize and train farmers on the importance of paying for health insurance.
“We will be mobilizing 500,000 farmers to pay for the farmer focused health insurance cover over the next 12 months and reaching 1.5 million farmers by December 2026,” he noted.
The CEO added that they are also committed to inclusive growth and having representation from all regions across the country through contributing to climate action through the KENAFF Farm Forestry and Afforestation Programme (2021—2030).
“We are committed and will be mobilizing all Kenyan farmers from across the 47 counties to plant 10 billion trees, 50 percent indigenous, 30 percent fruit fodder and 20 percent fast-maturing over the next ten years. We have started the process already in 28 counties,” Dr Mailutha said.
KENAFF Chairman Dr. Kaburu M’Ribu advised farmers to agree to use new technology as part of taming extreme climate change shocks. “There is a need to apply new science especially by agreeing to grow the right crops and following good agricultural practices,” he said adding that as KENAFF they were ready to work with the Agriculture minister to develop a farmers’ data system.
“Once in place, the system will help in farm input planning and especially the subsidized fertilizer. We ask the Government to consider using KENAFF to distribute the subsidized fertilizer as we have the capacity in terms of governance structure and will therefore reach out to farmers countrywide,” Dr. Kaburu said.
The 76th annual general meeting was attended by farmer organizations’ representatives drawn from 43 counties and 48 commodity associations.
Agriculture contributes 26 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a further 27 percent through forward and backward linkages with other sectors of the economy, including manufacturing, services, transport and logistics (KNBS, 2020).
The sector accounts for 65 percent of Kenya’s export earnings, providing a means of livelihood for about 70 percent of the country’s rural population and about 40 percent of the overall population.
