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{
    "id": 1459606,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1459606/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 228,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Tigania West, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) John K. Mutunga",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Allow me to speak a bit more about what I heard my respected Chairman say about agriculture. If we as a country were keen and really minded revisiting industrial revolution, it did not just occur. It was planned and very well calculated. Most countries have grown from agriculture. The fact that agriculture contributes a significant amount to the GDP tells us we have not done something as a country and Africa in general. We needed to organise our agriculture. We took it over from our colonial masters and continued to cultivate land based on its potential instead of subdividing it into economic units. We then had a settlement plan like the Affordable Housing Programme of the current President. We would have sufficient arable land to cultivate in this country if we started with the Affordable Housing Programme that time and settled people in urban centres. That would have also led to investments in aggregation. Right now, we must be deliberate as a country. We must focus on how to make small, large because a majority of our people are smallholder farmers. That means their production is limited and small. I categorically say that small is very expensive when it comes to production. What then do we need to do as a country? We need to reorganise our investments by focusing a lot more in making small, large. We can only do that by having serious cooperatives in this country. We should revive our cooperative movements and form new cooperatives to put smallholder farmers there. These cooperatives will have mechanisms of ensuring enhanced productivity because we have limited land. Only about 16 per cent of the country can do arable farming, if we have to continue being independent."
}