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{
    "id": 1525585,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1525585/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 251,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "when you are passing a farm, you will be amazed. This is a beautiful farm, very beautiful purple flowers, but that is the biggest pest that we have to contend with. For some time, the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) based in Mbita Town in Homa Bay County tried to help farmers to deal with the striga menace. The only solution that seems to work, so far, is for farmers to pull out the striga at an early age. Striga seeds propagate through the roots. If you do not pull out the entire thing from the roots, then it continues to propagate. The striga weed seeds grow very deep. Our people are saying that when you use a tractor to plough, it brings up the seeds and then you have got beautiful purple foliage of a pest. Our people did not know how to deal with striga and it really stunts maize. It would affect production by more than 60 per cent. It also drives up the cost of producing an acre because you have to weed not just once, but twice and yet we have the herbicides. Our people do not know how to use herbicides. They cannot imagine that there is something that you can spray in your farm to kill weeds and preserve the maize. They can only do that through demonstration farms and training. They also do not know that you can use fertilizer because naturally our soil is fertile. Someone should demonstrate to them that when you use fertilizer, then your production goes higher. A training needs to be done all the way through the chain, including harvesting. You harvest your maize, take it to the market and then you are told it has got aflatoxin. As a person who grew up in the village going through these processes, I can tell you I do not know how aflatoxin looks like. I do not know whether anyone in this House can look visually at maize and say this one has got aflatoxin and this one does not have aflatoxin. Madam Temporary Speaker, we would harvest, gather everything, put them on donkey drawn carriages, put them in a granary, leave them in a granary and put some little ash on them, so that they can survive to the next harvest. When you take your maize to the market, you are told it has aflatoxin. Can someone come and teach us how aflatoxin looks like? Can someone come and tell us what to do with our soil because I hear that aflatoxin comes from the soil. What should we do so that that aflatoxin does not get into the maize, so that our maize can get to the market? Madam Temporary Speaker for last 10 years the FTCs have died. We must now push for the revival of them. When we will be coming to Homa Bay, if we are doing the Devolution Conference at Tom Mboya University College, let us remember that was a farmer’s training college. Therefore, for the benefit of farmers in Bomet and in other counties, let us push. If each county cannot do an FTC, let us then have regional centres of excellence where our farmers can be taught what to do. We passed a law in this House called the Warehouse Receipt System. We have a Warehouse Receipt Systems Council in this country. The Warehouse Receipt System was supposed to move maize farmers from peasant subsistence farmers to people who could use their produce as collateral. You go harvest your maize, you have been trained how to tell whether it has aflatoxin or not, take it to a certified warehouse, keep your 100 bags of maize in that certified warehouse and you are given a warehouse receipt. With that The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}