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{
    "id": 1242215,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1242215/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 905,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "Cotton has been part of our urban centres and structures. When you drive along the roads of the cotton growing areas, you will find centres called store pamba, which simply means cotton store or store ya pamba . You will find in Homa Bay and Kisumu a centre called store pamba. One unique thing about store pambas is that they are huge warehouses where people used to bring and aggregate their cotton for it to be delivered onwards to the ginneries and to those who would process and add value to it. Madam Temporary Speaker, that was the landscape in Kenya – Homa Bay, Busia, Kitui and in several other counties until we succumbed to pressure to liberalize our economy and open the floodgates to second-hand imports into this country. That killed the cotton industry, once and for all. Even though we are always quick to blame the International Monetary Fud (IMF) and the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) of that error, there was also a lot of local blunders and political decisions made that led to cotton on the brink of collapse. In this country, it is thought that fertilizer is only for maize farmers. No one ever thinks of providing fertilizer to growers of cotton, cashew nuts and other agricultural products. Every one thinks that the farmers in Rift Valley – the North Rift, Trans Nzoia, Kitale and those areas, should be given seeds and fertilizers. No one ever imagines that to the fish farmer - the person with a fish pond or with fish cage fertilizer is equivalent to fish feed. No one is giving them fish feed. No one is giving our poultry farmers, free feed or subsidized feed, the same way we do to maize farmers. Madam Temporary Speaker, I am making this narration to reflect that cotton farmers were completely ignored and disregarded by the Government of the day. A lot of focus was on maize farmers in Kitale and Rift Valley. When it came to cotton farmers, they were left on their own. As a result of this, cotton became untenable because the variety of cotton we had, required to be sprayed and weeded several times. There is an interesting story my farmer told me before he passed on. The families of the days back were polygamous. Therefore, they had a huge labour force. When the children were deployed to the cotton farms, they could cover acres upon acres when weeding, spraying or picking the cotton. For those who have not had that experience, if you harvest one acre of cotton, by the time it reaches evening and you look back, you find a white field. When cotton is ready for harvest, the balls keep bursting and the white is exposed. So, you cannot say that you will harvest one acre and you will move on to the next. You have to keep repeating. Madam Temporary Speaker, family sizes have reduced. As a result, you do not have that labour to sustain the activities required by cotton farmers. The solution has come in the way of Bt cotton. There has been a conversation around Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) in this country. However, a decision was made that we start with Bt cotton. I support Bt cotton as long as we go through the necessary precautions required under the biosafety and other laws in this country. This is because Bt cotton"
}