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{
    "id": 1257825,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1257825/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 276,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "Therefore, it is a good recollection to see Sen. Wambua try and get a good coordinated effort to the farmers who produce this very nutritious crop and one of our favorite meals to date. It is not only here in Kenya but when you travel across the globe, especially in the South East Asia, this is a very popular dish. It is quite unfortunate that we have left farmers in Kenya for all those years to the vagaries of the market. They determine for themselves what value to be added, how to sell it, regulate its sale and how to organize and aggregate as farmers. Therefore, the effort by Sen. Wambua is quite commendable. We need many of such regulations and legislations that will help our county governments to realize that this is primarily the very reason why Kenyans accepted devolution. It was with the understanding that you are bringing services closer to the people. Part of the service that we speak about includes the responsibilities that I have seen Sen. Wambua, in the preliminary and even the first part of the Bill on the responsibilities of the national and county governments. He has detailed what measures they need to put in place both policy and organizing our agriculture to ensure that our farmers are properly organized, guided and get the necessary support from our agricultural departments. I have seen that the Bill gives duties and specifically to the county governor. Further in the Bill, there is specific reference to the County Executive Committee Member (CECM) in charge of Agriculture and the responsibilities that they are supposed to carry out. This is quiet commendable I have seen even part of the Bill that do not lay specific emphasis on what I want to speak about. Most of our agricultural practice all over the country is subsistent farming which slowly by slowly evolves into a way of living. You find that people plant either maize, beans or rice just to feed themselves. However, soon and very soon as they get better at cultivating that particular crop, they enlarge and increase on the crop having learned how to ply the trade better. Perhaps later they learn to sell of their surplus. That is how many Kenyans, the people that we represent in this House live their lives in the rural settings. As a country, we look forward to a time where we will be food secure. We shall be able to lift millions of Kenyans out of poverty by encouraging practices that assure and guarantee even the smallest farmers in the smallest of scale that they can make a living out of agriculture. It is by coming up with policies that will ensure that these small scale farmers are guided and protected. They should also receive the kind of service that they need from either the county or the national Government to nurture this crop to fruition and gain from it. With all the challenges that we have in the tea subsector, part of the genus that has made tea to be the leading foreign income earner to the country for all those years is the fact that through Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA), there is an aggregation process that brings together small-scale farmers. Many people own a point of an acre to two acres. In fact, 60 to 70 per cent of tea farmers in this county do not own more than one or two acres. It is in small percentages. Even in families that a father used to have four or five acres, over the years, it has been"
}