The Government has stepped up efforts to reduce the cost of agricultural production, with the price of a 50-kilogram bag of subsidized fertilizer falling to Sh2,000 from Sh7,000, Vice President Kithure Kindiki has said.
Kindiki said more than 34 million bags of subsidized fertilizer had been distributed to farmers, saving them an estimated Ksh100 billion in production costs.
He added that the Government was expanding support beyond fertilizer to include certified seeds, animal feeds, machinery, veterinary services, agricultural finance, transport and measures to manage climate and market risks.
“Through the government fertilizer subsidy programme, this was reduced to 2,500. And further, from last month, September, this has been reduced to only 2,000 shillings a bag,” Kindiki emphasized.
He spoke today at an Agriculture and Food Security Transformation Summit at the Jamhuri Park showground held under the theme, “Advancing Food Sovereignty, Job Creation, and Shared Prosperity” under the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA).
Kindiki said the price of certified maize seed had also been reduced by half, with a kilogramme retailing at Sh150 from Sh300, while a two-kilogramme packet had fallen from Sh600 to Sh300.
He said the Government was also using technology to improve the delivery of agricultural services, with the number of farmers registered on the Kenya Integrated Agricultural Management Information System (KIAMIS) rising from about 300,000 to 8.9 million.
The platform, he said, enables the Government to identify farmers, their location, crops, and livestock, as well as their input requirements, helping improve planning and delivery of subsidized inputs through e-vouchers.
Kindiki said the success of agricultural transformation should, however, be measured by improvements in productivity and household incomes rather than the number of farmers registered or inputs distributed.
“The ultimate measure is not the number of farmers registered, but how much is harvested from an acre, how much a cow produces, how much livestock fetches in the market, the price received at the farm gate, and most importantly, the income that remains in the household,” he said.
He said the Government was also seeking to improve farmer returns by strengthening markets, aggregation, storage, processing and value addition.
In the dairy sector, Kindiki said the guaranteed minimum return for milk had increased from Sh37 to Sh50 per litre, while national milk production had risen from 4.6 billion litres to 5.2 billion litres.
He said Kenya must move beyond exporting raw commodities and instead process and brand its agricultural products locally to create jobs and increase earnings.
Through the Kenya Integrated Programme for Export and Supply, the Government is bringing aggregation, grading, storage, cold-chain, and processing facilities closer to producers, with 17 facilities currently being equipped.
Kindiki said the government’s broader objective was to move farmers from food deficit to food surplus, with two million farmers targeted under the BETA agenda.
He said increased production had contributed to reduced maize imports, while gains had also been recorded in rice, sugar, sorghum, potatoes, avocado, and other strategic value chains.
The Vice President said agriculture must be treated as part of Kenya’s industrialization agenda, with raw materials such as milk, fruits, coffee, cotton, and livestock processed into finished products locally.
He said the next phase of agricultural transformation would require closer integration from research and seed production to farming, processing and markets.
“Kenyan raw materials must increasingly create Kenyan products, Kenyan enterprises, and Kenyan jobs,” Kindiki said.
He called for greater participation by farmers, pastoralists, county governments, cooperatives, researchers, financial institutions, manufacturers, processors, traders, development partners and the private sector in transforming agriculture into a productive, competitive and commercially viable sector.
The three-day summit that will run through to Friday will be graced by President William Ruto tomorrow.
by Wangari Ndirangu
