Agriculture has been the heart of the Kenyan economy from the country’s beginning. That position was established and protected by laws and regulations about land use as well as policies which prioritised the production of food and export crops.
Today, the agricultural sector can’t feed the nation, which has become a huge importer of food, an eventuality which has massive economic, strategic and security implications.
The surge in the food import bill to Sh80 billion—or 92 per cent of import earnings—in the first quarter of this year was big news.
It reflected, frankly, a rent-seeking, short-termist mentality that prioritised the import of food rather than a more robust determination to deal with the problems in that agricultural sector.
Agriculture contributes 20 per cent of GDP and accounts for 40 per cent of employment generally and 70 per cent in the rural areas.
I’m writing this in a rural county up in the mountains and all round there is evidence of the rural-urban dichotomy slowly being cleaned out.
There is a rush for land, which is being subdivided and sold as plots deep in the rural areas. Soon, there will be lots of flats but no land on which to grow food.
Growth in agriculture started stalling from 2020, at 4.6 per cent, collapsing to 0.4 per cent the following year.
This is the maize planting season and, although seeds are difficult to find, there is every expectation of a good harvest because of the expected heavier-than-normal rains.
But will it be enough to turn around the decline? In 2020, Kenya produced 42.1 million bags of maize, which fell to 34.3 million bags last year. The drop in production also affected coffee, beans, wheat and tea, according to the Central Bank.
Drought, probably associated with climate change, cost of inputs, disease and competing land use alternatives resulting from the removal of land use laws (Kenya is the most deregulated economy around) are some of the reasons.
But there is more to it. For people of Mwai Kibaki’s generation, agriculture was an ideological imperative: The nation needed to feed itself and its leadership of the continent and the world in crop production was a matter of great pride.
This mindset is lost among policymakers and politicians. Personal gain and political considerations are a bigger driver in recent years.
One of Kenya’s most valuable resources is the crop management knowledge in the population and which is not being passed on to the younger generation, especially with regard to coffee.
In another 10 years, Kenya’s coffee knowledge bank will be lost entirely. The production infrastructure—in terms of the cooperative movement—is almost gone. Should we choose to go back to coffee in the future, it will be as if we never tried it before.
Many times, the government makes the decision to withdrawal agricultural products from the global market in an effort to force local processing, apparently to create employment. A good example is macadamia nuts.
In 2009, the Ministry of Agriculture banned the export of raw nuts, allegedly to improve the access of local processors to the raw material. The ban was re-introduced in 2015 but, rather than set up industries locally, the international buyers most probably developed other sources where supply was more reliable.
Bad policy is killing agriculture. The old Kenya—confident, agriculture-driven, well educated, tech-savvy—is dying.
In its place, a new nation is growing—one that is corruption- and deal-driven, a value-free space of money-grubbing and nice watches, a politically drunk, shallow space purpose-made for social media.T
There is a strong case for revisiting a process-driven, thinking, sober, serious, less political, more sacrificial ethos in the management of the affairs of the nation. Let’s give agriculture (it’s a low-hanging fruit) another chance. Many production systems can be fired up quickly, employment created, incomes generated. This might require re-imposing land use laws and regulations
A country that cannot feed itself is not really free. It is possible to starve while a neighbouring country hoards food it doesn’t really need. Kenya should produce food as a sovereignty imperative. Kenya Defence Forces can grow food for the country in Galana-Kulalu and other schemes; the militaries of other countries have done the same.
Go back to the beginning, really.
As I write this, I am listening to JK Live, in which religious leaders are continuing with their recent tendency to a put a knife to the things that tied the church to Kenya Kwanza.
I think some daylight has opened up between the church and the man they "prayed to power". The church lost moral authority when it took sides in the election. I think if they repent and ask for forgiveness, they shall be redeemed.
From the alerts, I see the President has reshuffled the Cabinet—in what appears to be music chairs likely to have little or no impact on the fortunes of the man on the street. Not interested; not a "shareholder".
