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{
"id": 178585,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/178585/?format=api",
"text_counter": 345,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Samoei",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Agriculture",
"speaker": {
"id": 204,
"legal_name": "William Samoei Ruto",
"slug": "william-ruto"
},
"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the House for taking this very decisive decision to discuss this matter, which is of grave national importance. As a country, if we cannot feed ourselves, indeed, we should be the last that should be discussing about sovereignty. It is also a shame that 40 years after Independence, we are still discussing the basics of how to feed our own people. That is why I agree with the hon. Members when they raise these matters; they are grave and serious. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it may please the hon. Members to know that the World Food Programme actually feeds about one million of our school-going children, 40 years after Independence. That is not something to celebrate about. I agree that we have faced very serious challenges on the issue of food security. Let me say about five things. When I moved to the Ministry of Agriculture, the first thing I did was to persuade the Government to increase our strategic food reserve, which had remained at 3 million bags from 1963 up to this year. Our strategic food reserve has now been increased to eight million bags and the Government has provided money. We intend to, progressively, increase our strategic food reserve to 15 million bags, so that at any one time in future, we will not have a crisis like this, where if there is a small hitch, we quickly degenerate into an emergency situation. I want to assure this House that the Government has approved a budget, and put in money that is going to ensure that we raise our strategic food reserve to eight million bags next year and to 15 million bags by the third year. Secondly, hon. Members have raised the issue of alternative food items. We should not be wholly reliant on maize as a source of starch for our food requirements. I want to tell hon. Members that a pilot project was started last year, where the Government distributed, free of charge, certified well researched seeds of sorghum, millet, sweet potatoes and cassava to 36,000 farmers. We intend to do a repeat of that exercise this year. As a mechanism of expanding our food base, so that whenever we have issues with maize, we do not quickly degenerate into a food deficit situation. That programme is going to be enhanced and next year, we are going to double the number of beneficiaries. For your benefit, we have another programme; the National Agricultural Accelerated Inputs Programme. Last year, in 36 districts, we gave 1,000 farmers in each of them fertiliser and seeds for free under this programme. We gave these to very poor farmers. Again, we are going to upscale this programme, so that this year, we target 100,000 farmers. The most vulnerable farmers who cannot afford to produce any food, we are going to give them one bag of fertiliser and one bag of certified maize seeds for free. I want to ask Members of Parliament, together with our Agricultural Extension Officers, to assist us in identifying the most needy farmers---"
}