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{
    "id": 1371169,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1371169/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 162,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Olekina",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 407,
        "legal_name": "Ledama Olekina",
        "slug": "ledama-olekina"
    },
    "content": "has developed proper regulations that support the farmer, the private sector and ensure the sustainability of the crop? We are lamenting daily about the coffee brokers. If you listen to most leaders from Mount Kenya when they are raising their concerns about the coffee industry, they will tell you that cartels have taken it over. However, they will never tell you what we need to do. I believe the Chairperson Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Sen. (Dr.) Murango needs to look at the regulations and develop regulations that promote the sustainability of the crop. Can we create laws to ensure cartels do not overtake these cooperative movements? I hope I can have some time to sit down and discuss this with the Chairperson who has sponsored this Committee Bill. How do we do away with these vast controls by boards? Since agriculture is devolved, we take these functions to mini cooperatives. We give the cooperatives more power. If you look at the dairy industry today, we can learn from it. If you go to Githunguri – where I have learned a lot and now exercising the lessons; if you look at \"Fresha\" as a company in Githunguri Dairies, they have assembled all the farmers who make decisions. When they sell their milk, they know what they will get as a bonus and when they get it. They control the processes. I dare say that the Kenya Dairy Board asks them what they can do better. The Kenya Dairy Board collects this data to go out and say what they have done in the sector while it is the efforts of these farmers. We should not have a national body that controls the coffee industry. The control should go back to the farmers and cooperative movements. The private sector is working together. If you look at the cottage industry in this country, you will find beekeepers who come together and produce their honey, and instead of selling it in supermarkets, they go to weak markets. They sell their honey in the neighborhood markets and make money. As we think about legislation, I want us to do away with the formulation of these boards. You set up a board that needs money to run. The farmers will be taxed to fund these boards. We lament about the number of levies and taxes introduced in this country. The day we will do away with the taxes is when we will start developing legislation not to please the IMF or World Bank or create products for the export market but products that support the sustainability of our small economies. I want a farmer in Kitale to have two acres of land where they grow arabica coffee, and when they harvest, they can sell, make money and pay part of the money by a cooperative they formed where the farmer is a Member. In the last Parliament, there was a Bill we discussed, the Warehousing Receipt Bill. This Bill was thought-out well. We create warehouses where farmers can harvest their products and sell them; they get receipts indicating the market price. The farmer can opt to sell at the price or wait till the market changes. We will give the farmer a bonus of whatever they would have earned more than we are calculating in the current market. We need to borrow from this legislation, so that the farmer with two acres of land can agree that even if he were to export the product, they would ship it as a cooperative member. I have a few pointers that I want to highlight briefly. First, although I support this legislation, there is absence of prioritization for the sustainable development of the coffee sector in this country. We need to demystify"
}