Proposals on peasant farming in Kenya are a precursor to starvation

It appears Kenya might achieve a first in the World as a country where peasant farming is prohibited. The recent flood of proposals by government agencies tasked with policy development in the Agricultural sector seems enthusiastic to take the country in this catastrophic direction with oppressive farming rules.

Peasant farming refers to humble small scale agriculture where practitioners grow crops such as maize, cassava, millet, sorghum and vegetables. They also often rear some livestock on a small scale. The produce form peasant farming is used to feed the family and the surplus is sold. The farmer and family members provide most of the labor.

Crop rotation is usually practiced to enrich the farm.The farming is done using mostly labor intensive methods and traditional tools. Rain water is utilised and supplemented by basic irrigation methods. Local manure from the animals and compost are used as fertilisers.

This is the kind of enterprise that has been practiced by many African communities since creation. According to a 2016 report by International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) based on sample 13,000 peasant households in Kenya and 16 other countries across Africa, food security can best be achieved by economically empowering the peasants.

The report, Drivers of Household Food Availability in Sub-Saharan Africa, published on Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences website, said that  incomes and nutritional matters could best be addressed by helping the poor to sell the little they have.

More endowed

The report indicated that 83 per cent of the peasant farm household’s trade part of their crop produce, and 4 per cent of the farmers do not sell anything of their crop or livestock produce. The poorest farmers sell eggs while the more endowed sell milk; an income which helps them buy what they do not have, thereby helping improve nutritional intake at the table. In Kenya, this is what sustains almost all the rural folk where majority of Kenyans live.

It is therefore baffling that anyone would like to criminalize a practice Kenyans engage in with strange new regulations on farming without proper thought processes around it. For example, how is it detrimental to farming when harvested rain water is used?

Would it rather go to waste? How is it suddenly harmful to use manure for farming when this is actually what has been previously applauded? I have fed on vegetables nourished by natural manure for years without any adverse effects. What has changed? Is this the cause of our struggles in the sugar agricultural sector?

Where is the harm when a neighbour shares farm produce? This has been happening before and no one has complained. Whom has it suddenly hurt? Is it the cause of hunger in Turkana? Why is it suddenly detestable to prepare tea using the sweet fresh natural milk, share the surplus with a neighbour who may not have milk cows?

Natural manure

How does it become a problem when someone works hard on his maize farm and decides on his own what to do with his produce? How is it wrong to tap and utilise the perennial flooding water of Budalangi and use it for farming of vegetables for family use and sell surplus? Would it rather run off with people’s lives and flatten property?

What is wrong with using the plenty water of Lake Victoria to plant arrow roots? Where are these people making these proposals bench marking? In Uganda, food crops such as banana, beans and maize just thrive in farms with natural manure. They even feed most of the Kenyan population along the borders. The border between Kenya and Uganda is very activate with agricultural products being ferried into Kenya to mitigate starvation; most of it produced in peasant farming practice.

The authors of these proposals criminalising peasantry in Kenya appear to have gone crazy. They are shallow, hollow and narrow. Their creativity is wanting unless they are surrogates of a dreadful devil that has come to wipe out Kenyans with starvation.

Let them go and sort the issues of food scarcity currently hurting many Kenyans in various places first. They are a vexation and a distraction to the honest, enterprising Kenyan peasant farmer. Leave the farmer alone this period when planting activities are in high gear.

The peasant farmer does not need the suddenly found wisdom that failed to make Galana Kulalu a magical success. These rules will not only stifle food production in the country, which will trigger widespread starvation, it will also increase cases of malnutrition; is adversarial to rural economic progress and social stability.

It is a threat to peace and security of the peasant community in this country. The Kenyan peasant farmer needs support, not antagonism.

Mr Wesonga is a peasant farmer.gadassociates@yahoo.com