By Julius Sigei
President William Ruto's announcement at his inauguration that a 50kg bag of diammonium phosphate (DAP) fertiliser, which is widely used by farmers, will from next week retail at Sh3,500, down from Sh6,500, is good news, indeed.
The cost of the all-important input had driven farmers deeper into poverty and made Kenya food imports-dependent.
There is a lot the government can do to make the country food-sufficient. For instance, taxation of farm inputs and machinery makes Kenya’s agriculture one of the least profitable.
At 1.6 tonnes per hectare, maize output is way below Uganda’s six and the world's best of 12 tonnes.
Yet unaffordable inputs are hardly the only problem bedevilling our agriculture and it behoves the new government to address farmers’ problems comprehensively.
A key building block of successful agriculture is the efficient use of finite water, land and soil resources to produce more with less.
Another is farmer access to appropriate and affordable technologies for producing resilient quality crops.
Also important is the efficient flow of information so that buyers and sellers can find one another.
Allow me to address these building blocks, albeit briefly.
One, water. Our country is not among the wettest in Africa. Yet we don’t efficiently use rainwater.
Our dalliance with grand undertakings such as the Galana-Kulalu irrigation project, which gobbled up billions of shillings with little to show for it, offers a lesson as to why we should consider smaller, manageable irrigation projects.
How about two model dams per county with centre-of-excellence satellite farms around them for a start?
Two, resilient short-term crops. Considering our water scarcity and poor soils, the government should move to promote resilient short-term crops that do well in diverse climatic and soil conditions.
Crops such as finger millet and various varieties of legumes will not only ensure food security but also enrich our nutrient pool.
Three, land management. Unplanned urbanisation, soaring population and the attendant unsustainable land division further hurt our food production competitiveness. The government must quickly secure what little remains of our arable land.
This should go hand in hand with bringing the large fallow farms held by the so-called absentee landlords back to agricultural productivity.
Robust policy
Four, beef development. Considering its huge semi-arid swathes of land, Kenya’s comparative advantage is in livestock development.
A robust policy that secures rangelands is critical. That will result in the twin benefits of tapping into the beef export market and the leather sector, which holds one of the keys to the country’s industrialisation.
As with farmlands, our rangelands are being degraded environmentally at an alarming speed. The new administration should bring water to these areas and rein in desert encroachment and soil erosion.
Five, technology. Billed as the Silicon Savannah, Kenya must tap into its tech leadership in the continent to improve crop and livestock production through access to quality extension services and linking farmers to the market.
It’s unconscionable that the country still experiences the odd case of food rotting in one region due to a glut as people starve in another drought-stricken region.
Above all, any sustainable food production today must be one that is resilient, works with nature, builds crop and diet diversity, respects climatic patterns and empowers marginalised farmers.
So, even as we celebrate the lowering of fertiliser prices, we should widen our solutions to include agroecological practices which work to conserve the environment even as they produce healthier and more wholesome food.
The President’s signaling of the centrality of climate change adaptation in his speech is heartening.
He said: “Women and men, young people, farmers, workers and local communities suffer the consequences of climate emergency. To tackle this threat, we must act urgently to keep global heating levels below 1.5° Celcius, help those in need and end addiction to fossil fuels.”
Restorative agriculture that thrives on bio inputs is one way of achieving this goal.
The Kenyan farmer’s humble message to President Ruto is simple: Please make farming great again.
MCK Senior Officer, Training Standards & Curriculum Development , Mr Julius Sigei