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{
    "id": 1053473,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1053473/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 241,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dagoretti South, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Kiarie",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13322,
        "legal_name": "John Kiarie Waweru",
        "slug": "john-kiarie-waweru"
    },
    "content": "By relooking at our agriculture, we shall be speaking to the issue of the Big Four Agenda. In my critique of the Big Four Agenda, I understand it is important that we take cognisance of the need for health, urban housing and general housing. I believe that if we took agriculture, we shall be addressing all the other three Big Four Agenda items by just investing in agriculture. If we invested well in agriculture, our people who are predominantly farmers, will get an extra buck and with that, the population will pay a bit more for their health insurance thus supporting the health agenda. The same people will have some disposable income, meaning they will improve their livelihood and invest a bit more in the quality of housing. By just addressing agriculture in the Big Four Agenda, we shall have addressed all the other Big Four Agenda items including industrialisation. If we invest well in agriculture, we shall end up going into cottage industries and with this, we shall also be growing industries. It is important to me that this crop is disease and pest-resistant and so, even as we are talking about Bixa, it is time we stopped being cowards as a House and started looking at other crops that would be beneficial to this country. Our organic traditional foods are disappearing. We are in a situation where our country’s health system is overburdened with cases of cancer. We are learning that it is out of what we eat that we end up contracting diseases. Our bodies are not resistant to some of these diseases. We are honoured this morning to have in the Chamber an esteemed doctor by the name of Hon. (Dr.) Nyikal. I am sure he will be contributing to this later, but he would advise that it is out of the things that we eat, most of which are not organic foods, that we end up with cases of cancer. Even as we look at crops for consumption, we have also to drop our cowardice. Maybe it is time we started looking at other disease and pest-resistant crops. I would like to say that it is time we considered legalisation of marijuana in this country. I am saying this knowing and understanding well that marijuana, just as Bixa, is a disease and pest-resistant plant. We understand that from marijuana we can derive industrial and medicinal benefits. Every time we bring up the issue of legalising the farming of marijuana, we realise that there is so much pushback because people are resistant to the recreational use of it. By legalising a crop such as marijuana, we are not calling for its reactional use. In fact, we need to open our minds to explore the benefits that can accrue from farming a crop that is not affected by drought, pests and diseases. We need a crop that can benefit us through its industrial and medicinal use such as cannabis . This is a discussion that we will need to reopen as we have a holistic look at how we tackle agriculture. If this House was to put its mind into this issue of rethinking our agriculture holistically, then we would find benefit in crops such as Bixa and those that are drought, pest and disease-resistant like I have mentioned marijuana ."
}