HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 181849,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/181849/?format=api",
"text_counter": 160,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Duale",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Livestock Development",
"speaker": {
"id": 15,
"legal_name": "Aden Bare Duale",
"slug": "aden-duale"
},
"content": " Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to give my views and support Vote 10 of the Ministry of Agriculture. We know the role the Ministry of Agriculture, and more precisely, the production Ministry, plays in this country. It is on this basis that I want to thank and commend the Minister for Agriculture, his two able Assistant Ministers, the Permanent Secretary and the entire technical team of that Ministry. It is the Ministry that is in the hearts of Kenyans. It is the Ministry that has its operations in every village in this country. I want to turn to the irrigation system. I come from northern Kenya, a region through which the biggest river in this country passes. The greater Garissa District covers all ASAL areas, which have potential for irrigation, amounting to 24,000 hectares. My constituency alone currently sits on 20,000 hectares of potentially irrigatable land. You know that ten or 15 years ago, there was the Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC) farm of about 600 hectares. We know the importance of investing in the ASALs. We know that investment in this country is going to the ASALs. Agricultural heavy investment must be geared towards irrigation. I know that irrigation itself is capital intensive. It needs heavy capital investment, but as a country, we need to walk the talk in terms of food security. We need to walk the talk in terms of sustainable agricultural land use in this country. Let me pick on a country that sits on a desert, that is our neighbour, Sudan. If you drive from Khartoum to Port Sudan along the Blue Nile, you will see what they are doing within the Al Jazeera Irrigation Scheme; you will understand what I am talking about in terms of the potential we have in irrigation. Sudan exports food from irrigation to our neighbours. If I may come back to Dujis, where I have 20,000 hectares of potentially irrigatable land, only 2,000 hectares of that is being exploited. That translates to 10 per cent of the exploitable land in Dujis. In this same constituency, and in most of the northern Kenya constituencies, we see that 75 per cent of the people live below the poverty line. Is it a question of misplaced priorities? Is it a question of omission? We need to address that imbalance. We need to invest in irrigation systems in this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in northern Kenya, or in Dujis, 60 per of subsistence farmers along Tana River are mainly victims of drought. They lost their animals and they have come back to irrigation. They have formed groups. They are victims of the national disasters like drought and floods. We all remember the El Nino and the heavy floods of 2006 and 2007. We have a complete recurrent--- When all systems collapse, the livelihood of these people is at risk. It is high time we supported development of irrigation infrastructure and ensured that any gains our people make are preserved. I said that irrigation is an expensive investment, but the Ministry, and the donors, must support farmers in terms of farm inputs and irrigation pumps. They must buy the idea about the Arid Land Resource Management Programme under the Office of the President. It is a World Bank project and the Bank meets 70 per cent of its expenses while 30 per cent of it is paid by the farmers. We want the Ministry of Agriculture to come in and give support. We want to encourage and support the various projects within the Ministry. There is the Njaa Marufuku Kenya, the Kenya October 29, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3141 Agricultural Productivity Project (KAPP) and the NALEP, which are all geared towards improving productivity and the livelihood of the people. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we want to commend the Ministry for the good extension services it is providing, but we want it to increase its staff. We want to see more officers on the ground. We want those officers to be facilitated. We want them to get enough budgetary allocation. The road infrastructure and access to markets is very crucial to the farmers of this country. We want to see a situation where small scale processing factories are built along the irrigation schemes. Look at the mangoes, oranges and tomatoes which are being produced along the Tana River. We want to see a the Government building tea and coffee factories near farms; we want similar affirmative action taken with regard to tomatoes that are grown between April and September, during the cold season. If the ASALs have a small processing plant, that will add value. Value addition is a very important component from this Ministry. I know that unless we increase the value addition to our products, we will not be very competitive, and will not get enough income for our people. We need to increase the shelf life of these products like the tomatoes. Finally, we want the Ministry of Agriculture to focus on horticultural production in irrigation schemes in this country. We are talking of the mangoes and the oranges that are produced in Garissa and sold in the international market in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and around the Gulf Sea. This is a private sector initiative by individual farmers. I want to thank the Ministry of Agriculture for opening the HCDA office in Garissa recently. That was a good step, but we want them to improve the capacity of the farmers. Train the farmers; increase the allocation to the training institutions for those farmers. With those many remarks, I beg to support."
}