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{
    "id": 1183487,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1183487/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 149,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Saboti, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Caleb Amisi",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "protected. Land that is supposed to be used for farming is used for purely for farming. They can have a policy at the county level. Land is a devolved function. We must have a working programme between the county governments and the national Government. There are members of the County Executive Committees in charge of lands in the counties but they are not working. You wonder what they do in county governments. We know the Cabinet Secretary for Lands has his work cut out. What is the work of a Member of CEC in charge of Lands in the County Government? These are areas that we need members of CECs across the counties to work on such that we know that a certain county is meant for farming a particular crop and how well we can guard it. That even if they are owned by individuals, let them be guided by Government policy that they can only do a certain thing on specific land. You cannot just misuse land because you own it. Some of the ownership of these lands historically is a challenge. To some people, land was grabbed and others taken through unjust means. Whichever way they were acquired, can we have a programme of making sure that as a large-scale land owner you use it to help the entire country? It is not a matter of just having land and being proud for being a large-scale land farmer yet you are not farming. There is no pride across the whole country about just having idle land and no building, selling or fragmenting. In fact, land fragmentation has become a business where people buy land in order to sell to prospective buyers. People are now taking buying and selling of land as a commercial business venture, where they just buy land and after sometime they expect to sell it at a higher price. You find that land is now skyrocketing. An acre of land in a place like Kitale that is supposed to be used for farming, is going for Ksh20 Million and you wonder why. It is because people are using it as business for commercial purposes. Until when are we going to fragment our land? This is a timely Motion and I know after this Motion, Hon. Wanyonyi will take a step to actualise it through a Bill so that we have a proper legal framework on how to guard our natural resources and our factor of production. Land being one of them, we must guard our farmers; we must guard our land owners; we must guard what we hold dear as a nation and we must protect and contribute to food security through preservation of our large-scale land farming. Thank you, the Hon. Temporary Speaker."
}