Murang'a farmers will start receiving food items such as flour and cooking fat as part of the agricultural Minimum Guaranteed Revenue (MGR) programme, Governor Irungu Kang'ata has said.
This comes after the governor abandoned his year-long programme of cash transfers to farmers to implement the MGR for milk and mango farmers.
Under the programme launched by Mr Kang'ata on April 2, 2023, registered milk and mango farmers were to receive monthly cash transfers of Sh3.50 for every litre of milk delivered to area cooperatives and Sh7 for every kilo of mangoes delivered to contracted buyers.
The governor now says integrity issues have arisen with the programme, necessitating its restructuring to move away from giving cash to farmers and instead provide food and inputs using county resources.
"After one year of implementing the Mango and Milk Minimum Guarantee subsidy programme, where we are giving cash support to 21,000 farmers based on productivity, we will stop giving cash and instead introduce e-vouchers," the governor said in a statement.
He said the change in delivery modality was informed by submissions from stakeholders in search of a more effective service delivery formula.
Mr Kang'ata said his administration had embarked on a review of the farmers' list and would hold public participation forums in all the county's 35 wards to comply with constitutional guidelines that call for inclusiveness in decision-making.
He wants to increase the number of beneficiaries to 41,000 by the end of March 2024, hence the need to ensure transparency and integrity.
"Milk and mango farmers will redeem their vouchers at agro-vets across the country for items such as animal feed, artificial insemination services, seeds and seedlings and food items," Kang'ata said.
He said the new format will ensure that all farmers receive equal amounts of the subsidy kitty to ensure that the package benefits as many as possible.
The county chief also said that farmers who stop supplying milk and mangoes will be more easily detected and removed from the programme.
"Most farmers will earn more, stakeholders including agro-vets and veterinary officers will benefit as well as farmers who get flour, cooking fat and seedlings," the governor said, adding that technology will be used to track the new programme.
Murang'a Senator Joe Nyutu welcomed the new structural format, saying "all loopholes that have led to abuse of the programme should be sealed to benefit farmers without favour and free it from being hijacked by brokers and political loyalists".
In June, the chairman of the Dairy Breeders and Entrepreneurs Association, Martin Kamande, warned that the programme had been "hastily introduced, lacked clarity and was open to abuse, hence it should be suspended, investigated and corrected to serve all genuine farmers equally and fairly".
Mr Nyutu said the county was yet to get its subsidy programme right since the tenure of the first governor, Mwangi wa Iria (2013-2022).
"Mr Wa Iria would buy and distribute inputs such as fertiliser and maize seeds for free, and buy napier grass for dairy farmers and give them calves. Through economies of scale, the programme turned out to be a blatant abuse of county resources, something we should move away from," he said.
Mr Nyutu said the county used to lose more than 40 per cent of its subsidy budget to suppliers as well as 50 per cent of procured items during their free distribution to farmers.
He said the terms of Wa Iria's subsidy contracts were that the supplier would receive 30 per cent of the budget upfront and the distribution of the materials would take another 10 per cent, while at the same time opening up a network of theft and looting during the implementation chain.
According to the 2019 Agricultural Census, Murang'a, an agrarian economy with a population of 1.1 million, has about 317,459 farmers living in 231,171 households engaged in more than 150 types of farming activities divided into livestock and crop farming.
