
A farmer harvests sugarcane at a farm in Chemelil Sugarbelt, Kisumu County.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in its so-called special operation, Kenya, then a member of the UN Security Council, albeit a temporary one, issued a lyrical and much-quoted condemnation. President Vlamidir Putin dismissed us, airily saying something to the effect that some people who don’t have food, are starving, are coming here to tell us English.
A country without food has no standing and no face in the family of nations. Agriculture is the beating heart of our country; it feeds us, it employs (sometimes under employs) our people and it gives us some level of self-respect.
Recently I was looking for a former newsroom colleague for something I wanted us to do together and I couldn’t find him. He surfaced much later and said he was out in the farms in Western where he is leasing land to grow sugarcane. This is a mature, hardened, urban hyena. He can smell money buried six feet underground. If he is going after sugarcane, there must be lots of money in it.
For the longest time, sugarcane was a disaster. Farmers were broke and broken, never paid. The factories were known for always being on the auction block, closing down for maintenance at the most inopportune of moments and importing shiploads of sugar. Kenya has always imported sugar, apparently never able to grow enough for itself. And we have talked a lot of English about how our smallholders can’t compete with the huge estates of the Gezira irrigation scheme in Sudan.
Improved production
Yet, today Kenya is forecast to become a net sugar exporter by next year, relying on the same shoeless farmers with their trousers rolled around their ankles and handmade cigarette stuck behind their ear and a few hardy hyenas.
How did that happen? A bit of smart thinking and execution has gone into it. Genuine focus, improved production from better quality planting material, better management of cane catchment areas for various factories to secure supplies, better prices for farmers and millers, good contract farming practices, subsidised fertiliser, and a whole lot of other interventions which are now beginning to bear fruit, including free money in the Sh140 million ‘bonus’, a definite achievement for the government, keen to endear itself with folks in that region.
I suspect an even bigger achievement has been the reduction in the fraud that has been the sugar industry. I get the sense, without any direct evidence, that other than the guy with the rolled trouser, no one was serious about growing sugarcane. The main game was importing sugar. So the mills would be closed and firms would get licenses to import and slap logos on the finest Brazilian. Its easier money than having to actually go through the hassle of growing, cutting, transporting, crushing and all that.
One wag has pointed out that Mumias Sugar hasn’t crushed a stick of sugar in years but the supermarkets are fully stocked with its sugar, most probably grown by the prolific farmers of the Kismayu Outgrowers Sacco Society. Nevertheless, if city investors are leasing land to grow sugar, if Kenya will cease importing sugar in a year, if cane farmers are fully paid – complete with a bonus, a strange one – then that sector is certainly on the mend and a major boost to farmers who earn a living out of it.
Where attention is now needed is in growing the right food for our changing climate. As most Kenyans know, there is one phenomenon which has bigger consequences for the economy, and the kitchen table issues occupying the minds of families, than all the arrogant wizardly of Dr David Ndii and his gang of clever folk – the weather. If the rains tank, the shilling tanks because of food imports, debt shoots up, government spends more money and the whole unstable equilibrium teeters on the edge of disaster.
Support doomed crops
Generally, there are two rain seasons in Kenya: March to May and October to December. Depending on where you live, the October season is longer and is therefore mainly used for maize. This one has failed in many parts and a good part of the maize crop is lost.
The April season is shorter and therefore suitable for legumes, which tolerate less rainfall. Last year’s April season was unseasonably long, and the bean crop was completely lost in many parts. This is the classic impact of climate change – the rains don’t come as expected, and not in the proper quantities.
The maize prices in 2024 were such that it didn’t make much sense to take the crop to the market, in my view. The cost of putting 50 or 100 acres of maize under irrigation does not make much economic sense. In any case, maize, wheat and rice are lousy foods in nutritional and resilience terms.
Let’s not bother the government to support doomed crops, the policy should be to shift to real foods which are unaffected by drought. Yam, cassava, millet, cowpeas, finger millet, sorghum with meat from Galla goats and Boran herds thrown in for taste.
Meantime, I’m putting the snake infested Makandune on the market and riding out west, a cane cutter’s machete in hand.
Mr Mathiu, a media consultant at Steward-Africa, is a former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media Group. [email protected]