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Mr President, Fertilizer subsidy is welcome but not enough
As
President William Ruto embarks on his journey to transform Kenya’s economy
through agriculture, there exist a number of structural problems that Mr
President must deal with head-on if his agenda to make agriculture a true
source of livelihood is to come true.
Kenyan
farmers are exited with Ruto’s presidency for two reasons: First, his passion
for agriculture, and second, his admission and appreciation that for Kenya’s
economy to grow, farmers must lead the way. Ruto understands that, his bottom-up
model, as applied in agriculture, should start by securing the farming downstream
and ensure farmers have affordable access to agricultural inputs. He went with
speed to ensure that subsidized fertilizer reaches farmers a few days after his
inauguration. This is very positive and timely Mr President. Kudos!
In the
context of farming as practiced in Kenya today, access to agricultural inputs
specifically fertilizer is just a tip of the iceberg. A lot more, and urgent
obstacles exist, and President Ruto must intentionally work on them, otherwise,
the stand-alone fertilizer subsidy intervention will just go to waste.
This is my humble
piece of advice to our beloved president on how to fix the Kenyan smallholder
farming and make it viable sustainably:
i.
Through
structural changes in the small-scale-farm management, Ruto must establish strategies
that ensure economy of scale is achieved. For example, through the current
fertilizer subsidy program, the government will be dealing with almost ten
millions farmers who come in front of NCPB to solicit for the fertilizer. With
the economy of scale approach, the government must reorganize farmers into
groups whereby the government supports one individual who in return, supports
hundreds of farmers. There individuals must be agribusiness technocrats with
the end to end know-how of agribusiness value chains. I call such individuals
aggregators in one of my previous articles. You can read it and find out how
aggregation works. Like politics is a game of numbers, agriculture is a game of
scale. The government must conduct research on how smallholder farmers can pool
their operations together. Be it through land consolidation, aggregation,
outsourcing etc, something must be done. Kenya cannot continue having ten
million accounts of different farmers.
ii.
Secondly,
President Ruto must appreciate the fact that not all crops grown in Kenya can
create value to the farmers. Through my observation research, all smallholderfarmers who grow maize have never made ends meet. Small-scale maize farming has
never liberated anyone from poverty. Why? Maize and other grain crops like wheat
and barley can only be viable if grown on large scale. When grown in
small-scale, they can only be destined for self-consumption or sold in the
cheap local markets. In an ideal large-scale corn farming, corn become an input
farm protein production. Animal feed is expensive in Kenya because farmers
cannot produce corn, soya, barley etc at an industrial scale. President Ruto
must invest in shifting the focus on maize as human food and make it an input
for animal feed production.
iii.
Harmonizing
crops and synchronizing seasons: President Ruto’s government must make it clear
to farmers and community at large, which crops are best suited for growing
where. Farmers must be encouraged to grow particular crops at a given time. They
should not be left to double-guess. By so doing, the government will harmonize
and synchronize the crops and productions seasons. These two are very key
factors to accessing markets and achieving industrial scale production with
small-scale farms.
iv.
Volume
versus Value crops: President Ruto must appreciate the fact that Kenya has two
types of crops: Volume crops and Value crops. Volume crops are crops that only
produce value when grown in large scale while value crops are high yielding and
attracts high prices in small volumes. Most often, value crops are relatively
expensive to produce and delicate to handle during post-harvest. Vegetables,
horticulture, fruit crops are some examples of high value crops. The government
must have two separate strategies on how to support the two types of crops.
v.
Finally,
mechanization: National and county governments must reduce their direct
involvement in the procurement of tractors and agricultural machinery for
farmers. Instead, they must support farmers through public-private-partnerships.
The government should not buy machinery and rent them out to farmers, instead,
the government should support farmers through subsidies to purchase their own
machinery. However, only farmers who meet certain criteria can qualify for subsidies.
Equally, individual contractors can be beneficiary of subsidies if they can marshal
a certain number on farmers and certain area of land under them.
In
conclusion, it is time to approach Kenya’s agriculture from a deep strategic
point. Piece-meal interventions like fertilizer alone is not sustainable. We
must admit that the structure of our land today does not allow our agriculture
to become commercial. President Ruto must tackle the above issues head-on
without fear or compromise. Deep structural changes must take place for
agriculture to become a motor of poverty alleviation in Kenya. If not, false
hope and poverty cycle will remain as the status quo.
Joseph
Wambugu
Agribusiness
consultant and mechanization expert
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