State registers farmers for fertiliser subsidy scheme
Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya. High Court said he did not follow procedure in appointing an eight-member steering committee to implement reforms in the tea sector.
The government has started registering over 10,000 vulnerable small-scale potato farmers in three counties for a fertiliser subsidy programme and higher-yielding seeds.
The project, launched last week, targets farmers in Elgeyo Marakwet, Meru, and Nyandarua counties.
Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya said the government would pay 40 per cent of the cost of inputs in a bid to revive the struggling sector.
Mr Munya said that Irish potato is the second largest food crop in Kenya after maize, supporting about 2.5 million people in the value chain.
But due to high costs of production, over 800,000 smallholder farmers who grow potatoes on an average of one hectare were experiencing lower yields and poor returns.
The farmers produce an average of six to seven metric tonnes of Irish potatoes per hectare against a potential of 20 to 40 if quality seeds and fertiliser were used.
Mr Munya said this had greatly undermined food security and livelihoods for that segment of farmers.
He announced that the national government had built two cold storage facilities each with a capacity of 250 tonnes in Ngusishi, Meru County, and another in Nyandarua to reduce post-harvest losses and maximise earnings.
Farmers will deliver their produce to the stores when prices are poor and be enrolled in the warehousing receipt system where they can access loans as they wait for prices to improve.
“It is already happening with maize farmers and they can borrow money from various institutions like the Agriculture Finance Corporation using the records,” he said.
“Successive governments had done a lot for other food crops, especially maize, but none on potatoes apart from the current government. This government prioritised potato as one of the key crops for development.”
Some 60 per cent of the beneficiaries would be women and 30 per cent young people, said Beatrice Nyamwamu, the head of the food directorate at the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA).
She said AFA was registering 4,000 farmers in Kibirichia, Kiirua-Naari, Timau, Kisima and Katheri in Meru where most of the Irish potatoes are grown.
The farmers will then be trained on how to order and receive farm inputs from select suppliers through their mobile phones.
Ms Nyamwamu said the National Potato Council was working on a digital platform for marketing potatoes that will link farmers with buyers in a bid to eliminate middlemen.
