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{
"id": 1165867,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1165867/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13131,
"legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
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"content": "community gardens like what was popularly done in Seattle and in various jurisdictions for subsistence need and has helped people earn an extra income. Many people in Nairobi and other urban areas like Nakuru do not have extra coins. They are in what we call the kadonye economy. As a result, they get everything in small rations. If it is maize flour, they get it measured in small sizes. Even for tooth paste, when you go with a toothbrush, you are given just a little bit of it for that day. We also have the issue of peri-urban and urban agriculture. If you remember well, when we had the debate on the revenue sharing formula, I insisted that Nairobi cannot be scored zero on agriculture. This is because we have areas in Nairobi like Dagoretti South where we have Waithaka, Uthiru and other areas in Kasarani Constituemcy such as Njiru and Ruai and some areas in Karen and so on where agriculture takes place. Mr. Speaker, Sir, some livestock that have won in our annual agricultural shows are from Nairobi City County. I am sure you know that as a former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives. The main reason why young people are losing interest in agriculture is because we have not looked at the value chain of it. Agriculture contributes 56 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but only 3 per cent of revenue. That gap is because of lack of value addition. The youth want to make a quick buck, but we should show them how to do value addition. I am glad that today I saw the Governor of Makueni County, Prof. Kivutha Kibwana, launching a processing plant for pulses and grains in Makueni County and I think he has done well. The plant cost Kshs210 million. That will change the value of what a farmer would have given us in form of raw materials to a finished product. Value addition is supposed to happen in the urban areas, including Nairobi. As I buttress the point of Nairobi, where is the market for all these things that come from across the country? We have 15,000 extension officer visits annually in Nairobi City County, yet in the formula that was being propose that time, there was not a shilling being put for the extension officer visits by Nairobi City County. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I would like to tell Sen. Khaniri that there is a whole write-up on what urban and peri-urban agriculture has been able to do, including in the United States (US) during the time of the Great Depression. If I remember well, the President then insisted on the cities doing that and it really cushioned people from excess depression. I have areas in a Mathare, for instance, just by the water, where young people are doing pig and chicken farming. That has alleviated them from poverty and they have seen the result of doing chicken and pig farming in the urban areas. So, we are also affected because we are not just consumers, but we can also be producers. We intended to put it a notch higher after August 2022, when the necessary happens, inshallah, just to make sure that even us in the urban areas can see that instead of using extra Kshs200 on flour and on vegetables, even within the slums, we can provide, so that we are food sufficient. I thank Sen. Khaniri for that. We need to start being more creative."
}