Cane farmers face discrimination from policy makers

At the risk of seeming like I’m belabouring the point, allow me to stay on topic a while longer on the woes affecting the sugar sector in Kenya. While Kenya’s agricultural performance over the last decade has continued to flourish with tea, horticulture and coffee playing leading roles, the sugar industry has continued to stagnate.

It has been argued by some; including the chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, Adan Nooru, that the main problem is the persistently high price of sugar produced locally vis-a-vis international production.

This may be true but it isn’t the entire truth. The truth is the sugar sector has not received the same level of support extended to other leading cash crops. In 2004, the government, eager to revive the coffee sector, promised to write off Sh5.8 billion in old debts owed to the Cooperative Bank by farmers.

In 2010 the Cooperative Development ministry, then under Joseph Nyaga, sought Parliament’s approval for a Sh1.2 billion grant from the Treasury to enable it write off debts owed by coffee farmers.

In 2012, then Finance minister Njeru Githae allocated Sh1.5 billion to write off coffee and tea grower’s debts. At least Sh8.5 billion has been spent since the turn of the century writing off debts owed by coffee and tea farmers.

Considering sugarcane is one of the largest industrial crops in Kenya, cane farmers have not been recipients of similar government goodies. Instead of debt forgiveness, sugar farmers have been underwriting the milling companies. This insidious discrimination has meant cane farmers are one of the sorriest lots. It appears there are certain crops the government cares for more than others. There are proper and pauper cash crops. It seems tea and coffee are politically correct, sugarcane and cotton are not. The key to unlocking the riddle isn’t the crop, it is the farmer.

It is not unheard of for certain areas to be economically marginalised and sabotaged because of their political leanings. Since independence, regional development or lack thereof has been strongly linked to voting patterns. The very yearning of certain regions to have one of their own in power is a vindication of the fact that the government of the day is viewed as only serving those who put it in power while impoverishing those perceived to have voted against it.

The tools of achieving the nefarious end of weakening your opponent’s political base are usually policy decisions that have long term effects on entire regions.

In the sugar sector for instance, at the policy level, someone cunningly decided that the way to solve the high cost, low quantity production problems was not to improve efficiency and productivity but rather fill the gap with cheap imported sugar.

Sugar barons who hold the import licences are usually well heeled financiers of the regime in power. While this offers an immediate and apparently painless fix the long term effect is to further cripple the sugar industry.

Imagine for a moment if the same policy were to be adopted for say electricity. Instead of investing in increased production, what if the policy was simply to import cheaper foreign electricity?

A country that is looking to develop capacity should not be surrendering to the markets. World over, agricultural subsidies are recognised as a tool necessary for guaranteeing self sufficiency. The failure to come up with a coherent marshal plan for the sugar sector in Kenya is not by accident. It is a cunning plot devised to deprive and demoralise a certain segment of the population.

This will probably persist until the day the sugar growing regions will be deemed to be ‘towing the line’ or get “one of their own” in power. Only then will we see proper policy. In the meantime, cane farmers in the sugar belt are in for hard times.