Kenya’s food security is worrying.
An announcement by the Agriculture ministry that the country will have to import four million of bags of maize is discomfiting.
It is apparent that efforts to promote agricultural productivity and guarantee food sufficiency are not bearing fruit.
Even more distressing, the country is grappling with a coronavirus pandemic that has shut down all productive engagements, including agriculture.
And the challenge is double-edged. Farmers cannot work on their farms to produce crops, yet available resources cannot be used to support agriculture as they are channelled to combating Covid-19.
Depressed production creates shortage and a price spike. Maize importation is fraught with challenges.
AFFORDABLE GRAINS
First, questions abound over the correct situation of grain deficit.
Last year, the ministry and the Strategic Food Reserve Oversight Board were at loggerheads over maize importation due to differences regarding the veracity of the status.
Tied to that is the fact that maize production and trade is highly political and interests are deeply entrenched, which end up messing things.
Secondly, mention of yellow maize brings bad memories of the 1980s, when the country was forced to bring in and feed people on what became to pass as animal feed.
Thirdly, as observed last year, Kenya should look to its neighbours, including Zambia, for affordable grains instead of going offshore for the yellow maize.
Precisely, the question is, why should the country import maize? Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya attributes it to poor stocks due to destructive rains last year that led to massive floods that swept away farm produce or blighted crops.
WORKING SYSTEM
It all boils down to poor agricultural production. Our agriculture is largely rain-fed.
Crops are destroyed when heavy rains fall and damaged when rains fail. It is a lose-lose situation. Elsewhere, rainwater is harnessed and managed for better crop husbandry.
Second, farming is a smallholder enterprise run by families on tiny parcels. Outputs are marginal.
Contrastingly, large-scale farming, which comprises mechanisation and technology utilisation and promises huge yields and better returns, is minimal.
Third is corruption and mismanagement. When, in 2014, the government launched the ambitious multi-billion-shilling Galana Kulalu irrigation project at the Coast, the promise was that it would greatly boost crop productivity and ensure food sufficiency.
But that was never to be. It has become a veritable and monumental failure. Other irrigation projects started elsewhere in the country such as Turkwel have equally come to naught.
Kenyans need to be properly appraised on the food question.
