Coconut, cashews to be cash crops if Bill passes

Kilifi North MP Owen Baya addressing journalists at his home in Kilifi town [Maureen Ongala, Standard]

Coconut and cashew nut farming will qualify for State funding and marketing if President Uhuru Kenyatta assents to a new Bill that seeks to make them cash crops.

The Bill passed by the National Assembly last Thursday is aimed at including cashew nut and coconut to the first schedule in the Crops Act of 2013 just like coffee, tea, and sugar cane.

If President Kenyatta signs the amendments, the State will be obligated to annually provide funds for the revival of the two sectors, which in the 1970s and 80s were thriving at the coast region.

The government will also prescribe the minimum period within which farmers are to be paid for produce delivered to the processors and penalties for delayed payment.

Further, the government will also be required to recommend general agreements between farmers and processors, and encourage value addition of the produce before export in a move that could be a big blow to brokers blamed for the collapse of the production of the two crops.

Yesterday, Kilifi North Member of Parliament Owen Baya (pictured) who tabled the Crops (amendment) Bill said the amendments were unanimously passed by the National Assembly on Thursday.

He said the two crops were the second income earner for the coast region after fishing and that their revival would end the region’s over-reliance on the tourism sector.

In 1970s when cashew nut farming was thriving, farmers could produce up to 36,000 tonnes but currently, they struggle to produce 10,000 tonnes.

The government established the Kenya Cashewnut Limited (KCL) in 1975 and a processing factory in Kilifi with a capacity to process 15,000 metric tonnes of cashew nuts annually.

Fourteen years later, in 1989, KCL started facing governance and financial challenges which led to its collapse in 1997.

Notably, Matuga MP Kassim Tandaza Sawa has also tabled a Bill to amend the Crops Act further to also include Bixa in the schedule one crops.

The two leaders said the three crops are now grown in other parts of the country hence the need for government support. 

The legislators want the government to revive KCL and other line industries in coast once the president assents to the Bill.