RATIN

Fertiliser shortage hits Rift

Posted on February, 15, 2019 at 10:02 am


Peter Leshan

Maize and wheat farmers in South Rift are staring at uncertainty as severe fertiliser shortage hits the area three weeks into the planting season.

The outage bites even as 50 kilogramme bag of Di-Amonium Phosphate (DAP) is retailing at between Sh3,600 and Sh3,800 up from Sh3,000 in the previous planting season.

The high demand for the important farm input is occasioned by the absence of the government’s subsidised fertiliser which has for the last 10 years cut cost of production by almost half.

Huge profits

Farmers said yesterday that traders were taking advantage of the absence of subsidised fertilisers to make huge profits, adding that they would reduce sizes of land under the two crops.

“The government has left us on our own after it failed to procure fertiliser in time for planting. Because of cheap fertilisers, we have over the years expanded land under crops but this year we will reduce to cut the high cost of inputs,” said Dancan Totona, a large scale wheat farmer in Olopito area in Narok North.

He said some farmers had prepared acres of seed bed because of fair diesel prices between December and this month.

“Fuel prices favoured us. We did not know the government will let us down by failing to ensure cheap fertiliser is availed in time,” said Totona. Because of procurement issues, the government has said it would this year not avail the product.

High yields

Dr Noah Wekesa, the chairman of Strategic Food Reserve has asked farmers to procure fertilisers in the market because the one under the subsidised scheme would not be forthcoming.

Nasheiki ole Kimojino, a large-scale maize farmer in Emarti area in Transmara said this year, the weather looks favourable for high yields and faulted the agriculture ministry for failing to advise them in time to source for the input elsewhere.

Source: MediaMax Network