Agriculture on its deathbed and nobody cares

The Jubilee administration, whether knowingly or unknowingly, is increasing poverty levels by killing the agriculture sector, on which more than 75 per cent of Kenyans depend for a livelihood.

And I see the same trend in transport, manufacturing and the recent removal of the interest rate cap to allow their exploitation by the banks.

Maize, wheat, coffee, tea, sugarcane and now poultry and the dairy sector are slowly dying as a result of the government imposing huge taxes on agricultural products and allowing cheap imports from countries where production costs are low because of subsidies.

Recently, President Uhuru Kenyatta opened up the local market to Ugandan eggs and chicken, despite knowing very well that the production cost in Uganda is much less than here. The end result is that now all eggs and chicken on sale come from Uganda and our farmers have closed their businesses, causing massive job losses and increased poverty.

The farm gate price of milk is at an all-time low of Sh20 a litre; the same quantity retails at Sh100 when processed. The annual tea bonus halved from last year’s rates. Several sugar companies have collapsed, leading to mass layoffs in sugarcane farms.

Coffee prices are very low, forcing farmers to uproot their trees, yet they buy processed coffee at over 50 times what the farmer is paid for his beans. Maize is rotting in farms as traders and millers buy cheap grain from Uganda and Tanzania.

The loss of jobs has an adverse multiplier effect as the people lose their purchasing power and, hence, are not able to support the other sectors of the economy.

The population has hit an all-time high of 47 million. Where will these people go if the agriculture sector dies?

For the first time, Uganda had a favourable balance of trade with Kenya in 2017-18, exporting $122.78 million (Sh12.2 billion) more goods than we sold to them, which is directly attributed to our dying agriculture sector.

The report, ‘The 19th Kenya economic update: Unbundling the slack in private investment’, says agriculture is a major driver of growth for the economy and is a dominant source of employment. From 2013-2017, the sector contributed, on average, 21.9 per cent of GDP.

Agriculture is responsible for most of the exports, accounting for 65 per cent of merchandise exports in 2017. It is the largest employer, contributing 60 per cent of the total jobs.

The immediate actions to save the sector include banning cheap agricultural imports, removing VAT on farm inputs like fertilisers, chemicals and diesel, improving the prices of agriculture products; investing in value addition to stop exporting of raw materials, and starting irrigation projects to end reliance on rain-fed agriculture.

Others are making affordable credit easily accessible to farmers; deploying agronomists to teach farmers modern farming methods; and having a clear policy on land fragmentation.