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{
    "id": 1525553,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525553/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 219,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "the country, I must return back to Londiani and tell my farmers why I have allowed maize importation. Sen. Ledama must be able to stand in Narok town and see the wrath of his wheat farmers and urge them or listen to them before taking that decision. Otherwise, when you leave it to be a power to be exercised by the Executive alone with no significant checks, you will find yourself in a situation such as the one we are dealing with of the wheat farmers presently. Farmers have had a good crop and their stores are full. However, importers are applying to be allowed to import wheat from Ukraine, Russia and all these other parts of the world with no justifiable reason. That cannot be allowed. The Government cannot be investing billions of shillings that they are investing in the fertilizer subsidy programme, but only for farmers to die with their crops in their stores. We must assure a market for them. Sen. Ledama and the Senators that are listening, I do not know if you know this, but the challenge we have is that the milling industry in this country is controlled by a very small elite group. Imagine three, four or five people sitting down round a table and take a decision for the rest of all our farmers. They decided not buy local farmers’ produce unless the price drops to a particular ratio. We must increase competition. The Government must ensure that they provide proper motivation to other players in the milling industry to ensure that even small-time milling farms can crop up in our smaller towns. These big milling companies that continue to ignore farmers and our farmers have to sell their crop at their whims, becomes a thing of the past. Otherwise, I celebrate the industry of this committee. I hope we can draw the lessons. I want to challenge Sen. Wakoli together with all the Members of the Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries that this is just a pointer to a broader problem."
}