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{
    "id": 1242217,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1242217/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 907,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "reduces the amount of work required to tend to the cotton crop and the number of times to spray. It is handier. Madam Temporary Speaker, Bt simply means that it is injected with something that makes it more resistant to pests. As we discuss the Cotton Industry Development Bill, let us look at other aspects of ensuring that our farmers have got the right kind of seed; be it Bt cotton or anything that scientists finds to be better than what we traditionally used to have. We cannot afford labour because we stopped being polygamous and having many children. In the olden days, it was children, wives and husbands who used to provide labour to the farms. As long as Bt cotton and other improved varieties are safe for human consumption, then they should be promoted. Madam Temporary Speaker, for a long time, the Cotton Lint and Seed Marketing Board was seen as a position to be given to persons who were in the opposition in order to contain and tame them. You do recall that when hon. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga left detention, he was appointed to be Chair of this Board, but he was a truthful man. Today, people tolerate truthful men, but they never tolerated the truthful man that hon. Jaramogi was. When he was appointed the Chair of the Cotton Lint and Seed Marketing Board, he said that there are people who grabbed land in Kenya. As a result of that, he was fired from that Board and sent into political oblivion. Those were some of the things that made cotton to be under-looked and underrated. There was under-investment in the cotton industry, just because of political considerations and also because cotton was grown in areas that were politically radical. The Government in terms of its industrial and agricultural policies saw to it that those regions remained marginalized and at the mercy of the national Government. Madam Temporary Speaker, this Bill should cure that problem, revive cotton growing and put money back into the pockets of cotton growers. It should also allow cotton growers to walk with the same kind of dignity that maize farmers have. This Bill should ensure that the national Government looks at cotton the same way it looks at maize growers. As it is providing free or subsidized fertilizers to maize growers, it should do the same for cotton growers. It should provide good quality seed to cotton growers. It should ensure that there is a market for the Kenyan cotton. It should ring-fence the Kenyan local market. Madam Temporary Speaker, there was the Africa Growth and Opportunities (AGOA) Act that the Americans came up with to support African countries to spur local production and be able to export things to the United States (US). Statistics show that even though we are making Levis, Lee and all sorts of designer brands here in Athi River, all of which are extensively based on cotton, most of that cotton comes from Egypt, Ethiopia and other countries. Very little of it comes from Kenya. We need to address that. If AGOA is to be beneficial to the people of Kenya, it should not just be in the form of providing some form of sweatshop kind of labour for our people in Athi River. It should not just be because it is providing a real estate market boom in Athi River, Syokimau and related areas."
}