Food security must be bedrock of Ruto’s bottom-up economics

Of the numerous priorities facing President William Ruto’s new administration, food security appears, to me, to be the most pressing.

Some 3.5 million Kenyans are facing severe hunger following the failure of a third consecutive rainfall season in eastern and northern parts of the country, as per the latest projections by the Famine Early Warning System Network.

These Kenyans in arid and semi-arid regions, plus millions of others in rural and urban areas who go to bed hungry several days a week, have no way of meaningfully contributing to national economic growth, as they are hamstrung in an existential fight for survival.

When the party music stops playing and the confetti from all the grand banquets held to welcome the new President into office clears, the plight of the long-suffering Kenyans must prick the conscience of the incoming administration.

Agrarian revolution 

You could build the smoothest and most modern road and railway networks, extensive electricity grids and the fastest internet connection infrastructure, but a hungry population remains a largely unproductive citizenry.

It is not a mere coincidence that the foundation of all great ancient and modern civilisations was the agrarian revolution.

The Russia-Ukraine war has badly exposed our food insecurity.

As Russia blockaded Ukraine’s ports, food prices in Kenya and across Africa shot through the roof.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of commodities, averaged 159.3 points in July, its highest level ever, up 12.6 per cent from February when Russia invaded Ukraine.

FAO attributed the 17.1 per cent rise in the price of grains to the war in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine account for approximately 30 per cent and 20 per cent of global wheat and maize exports, respectively.

Prices of vegetable oils also rose sharply, driven by higher quotations for sunflower seed oil that is used for cooking, triggering a steep increase in prices of cooking oil on Kenyan supermarket shelves.

Ukraine is the world’s leading exporter of sunflower oil, while Russia is second. It is bewildering how Ukraine, a country of nearly the same population as Kenya’s (about 45 million), could wield so much control over African food supplies.

Expensive government subsidy

High food prices were in fact a major campaign issue in the just-ended general election as the price of the Kenyan staple, the 2kg packet of maize, hit Sh250 apiece. Not even an expensive government subsidy helped to cool off the prices.

The World Food Program, in a report released on May 4, noted that the Russia-Ukraine war had exposed the interconnected nature and fragility of global food systems, with serious consequences for global food and nutrition security.

Heavy reliance on imports of food and agricultural input from Russia and Ukraine has left many African countries on edge, raising the all-important question of policy priorities on the continent.

Somalia, South Sudan, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Egypt and Kenya are some of the African countries most affected by the Ukraine war, according to the UN-appointed Joint Coordination Center that has been overseeing negotiations to lift the Russian blockade over Ukrainian ports.

Somalia, for example, imported 90 per cent of its grain supplies from Russia and Ukraine before the war between the two neighbours erupted on February 24.

On his campaign tours, President Ruto chided the government should lower maize prices to below Sh100 per 2kg packet, to make it accessible to the majority of poor Kenyans.

Upon assuming office, the President termed a multibillion-shilling maize flour subsidy programme unsustainable, and instead opted to intervene by lowering fertiliser prices.

In their manifesto, Kenya Kwanza promises to tackle perennial food insecurity by subsidising farm inputs, while avoiding consumer price subsidies.

Bottom-up economic model

President Ruto will need to do more than just subsidise farmers. He will need to re-engineer the entire food production, storage and distribution chain to ensure that all Kenyans have access to affordable food all year round, come rain or drought.

This would be the biggest uplifting of those who embraced his bottom-up economic model and voted him into office.

The Ruto administration must seek to establish what countries such as Ukraine did those many years ago to establish a food production, storage and supply chain that competitively feeds large sections of the global population.

Granted, irrigation schemes, storage warehouses and food supply chains do not offer great slogans while on the campaign trail.

A voter who will never get to see the Galana-Kulalu irrigation scheme may not easily appreciate why the government should spend billions of shillings on the project, and could easily vote for a candidate who builds a third-rate tarmac road across his village.

Yet, when the Ruto administration attempts to dig into the success factors of food-secure countries, they will find modern farming methods and mechanised and irrigated agriculture at the centre of it.

That means even farmers in Kenya’s traditional breadbasket regions of the Rift Valley and other areas must be supported to mechanise their operations, so as to compete favourably in the global markets.

In his manifesto, President Ruto also promises a minimum price guarantee for farmers’ produce.

I dare contend that this will not be achievable if the new administration does not operationalise on a large scale basis the warehouse receipt system.

Food producers, particularly, face the perennial hurdle of market gluts and price collapse during harvest season, which leads to wastage and huge losses.

Supply-chain weaknesses

If the Ruto administration subsidises inputs but fails to address the storage and supply-chain weaknesses, the same problem of acute food shortages in sections of the country and unhappy farmers in the other will undoubtedly persist.

Rome was not built in a day. Instead of stretching itself thin and eventually failing as the Jubilee administration did in trying to address our food insecurity by pouring billions into multiple irrigation projects, the new administration could identify one or two schemes that offer prospects of highest productivity, and invest in them for a start.

Mr Gikunju is the Managing Editor, Weekend Editions, Nation Media Group.