ELDORET: Farmers in the North Rift are scaling down maize production due to high prices of inputs that lead to low net returns.
“I began planting maize in 2005 and I used to cultivate over 500 acres in Moiben and Soy constituencies, but in 2009 I quit due to a drought that drained my investment considering that maize production is capital intensive,” says Sammy Kibiwott Karoney.
He says the venture was not profitable, requiring a lot of time and labour, but was fully dependent on weather conditions.
“Maize production is not a lucrative affair. For every Sh100 you get, Sh80 is the input and Sh20 is the profit and this takes an entire year. When the drought hit me in 2009, it took me back like three years and I chose to go into horticulture and dairy which are doing well,” says Mr Karoney, adding that: “In horticulture, for every Sh100, Sh30 is investment and Sh70 is the profit just within four months unlike maize that takes a full year.”
Tom Gorgoren from Soy in Uasin Gishu County cites the high cost of production of maize as a challenge that has discouraged many farmers, some of them even quitting or scaling down on acreage.
“Other East African countries have subsidised their fertilisers and seeds and even if they sell a 90Kg bag of maize at Sh1800, they get a profit, but we spend more in production,” he adds.
Richard Busienei, another large-scale farmer from Kesses, observes that maize production has gone down and so have the returns for farmers. “You cannot get the same amount of maize from one acre in 2015 as you would have in 2000. Earlier it was easy to get 30 bags from an acre with little fertiliser but currently with all basic procedures observed, you just get around 20 bags,” he explains.
He says that the only way to revive the sector is to embrace new technology, which in most cases will lock out small-scale farmers due to the expensive nature of machinery, equipment and inputs.
Milcah Cheptobak from Sugoi in Turbo constituency, who has 11 acres under maize, says the returns she used to get from an acre keep going down despite the rising fertiliser and seed prices.
“For the past ten years, the venture has been getting more costly and less profitable” she explains
The trend in maize production, according to a 2008 Economic Survey by Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development under the Ministry of Agriculture, shows that in 2002 there were 26 million bags produced, which rose to slightly above 34 million bags in 2006, but sharply dipped to below 26 million in 2008.
This reflects a deficit in relation to maize consumption that has steadily risen from 29 million bags in 2002 to 36 million bags in 2008, hence a deficit of 10 million bags.
