How subsidies back food security and production

Farmers push a handcart perched with fertiliser at Giakaibei Village in Mathira. [Kibata Kihu, Standard]

Government fertiliser, seed subsidies and cooperation between State Department for Agriculture and devolved governments are turning around prospects of the country’s food security and general food production.

Learning from trends in Malawi that bumped in huge food productions between 2002 and 2004 new policy directions by the State Department of Agriculture have helped jumpstart Kenya’s food security which had deteriorated to threatening levels by end of 2022.

The cost of maize flour, a staple food in Kenya, had skyrocketed beyond reach, and majority could not afford 2 kilo packet at Sh230. The interventions by the government over the past two years have brought back Bomet County for example to the league of the country’s bread baskets after declining in maize production for over 10 years due to a consistent outbreak of Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN).

Bomet had plummeted to the knee in maize production, but a refocused energy has restored the county’s food sufficiency.

The South Rift county that had near zero bags just a while ago has produced over 600,000 bags in the latest harvest thus bolstering the county’s food situation.

The food security subsidy and crop diversification have occasioned an increment of hectarage under maize to 2,353,655 in 2023 with up to 44 million bags of harvests. The department is now targeting about 10,843,015 hectares in the next five years.

Agriculture Principal Secretary Kiprono Rono recently put the number of farmers accessing farm inputs at 3,458,152 through the e-voucher input system.

The policy has worked wonders, affording farmers enough resources to redevelop their farms through affordable fertilisers and seeds. An initiative to make the supplies more qualitative should be put in place to forestall situations where greedy people take over the markets, selling fake seeds and fake fertilisers.

These interventions have catapulted reasonable harvests in the country’s renown bread baskets and enabled bumper harvests in other regions thus leading to drastic drop in the prices of Unga.

Key policy milestones brought forth by the department that include the establishment of Agricultural Technology Development Centres (ATDC), enhanced mechanisation, post-harvest management in grain value chain, agricultural soil policy and agricultural mechanisation policy, are expected to support other endeavours to improve food security.

A new focus on agricultural research needs in various counties which the department has begun will provide a better analysis of what is required by farmers to sustain their venture considering the changing climatic and soil conditions.

Though agriculture is a devolved function, the national government is expected to play a major role in keeping counties food secure and Kenya safe from vagaries of food insufficiency.

Various interventions including the recent initiative dubbed “agri-preneur” can only support prioritisation of agriculture to ensure food and nutrition security for all. It is important that everything is put in the works to intensify activities in developing an enhanced productivity in the four key value chains which include tea, edible oil, rice, textile and apparel cotton.

The Department of Agriculture can also put focus on other value chains such as coffee, sugar, pyrethrum and avocado that has now become our black gold.

Distribution of seeds to support the cotton value chain that has been going on, should be expanded to achieve 637,000 hectares in the next five years.

Potential cotton growing areas like Rachuonyo in Homa Bay County should be revisited, and ginneries constructed to reassure farmers of a market. That way agriculture can play a major role in industrialising the devolved units faster.

The writer is a chief officer at the Homa Bay County Government