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"id": 182161,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/182161/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Prof. Olweny",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Education",
"speaker": {
"id": 122,
"legal_name": "Patrick Ayiecho Olweny",
"slug": "patrick-olweny"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I want to make a few comments in support of the Motion. In this country, we are not doing enough to produce our own food. The Government is not doing enough to produce enough food to feed Kenyans. We, as a country, as I have said, are doing October 28, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3055 too little to feed our people. The Ministry of Agriculture is not doing enough with regard to production of food in this country. We cannot expect to get enough food if farmers are not being supported. With the agriculture that I know, farmers must be supported. If you go to the US, Europe, Asia and China, India and Japan farmers are supported. If you go to Australia, farmers are supported. Why are we not supporting ours? Colonialists used to support farmers in this country, but when we took over the Government, somewhere along the line, this practice was stopped. Farmers must be supported in one way or another. You can call it guaranteed minimum returns scheme or anything. Get the best word for it; there are some words which our development partners do not want us to use, but the best way to produce enough food is for farmers to be supported. Look at the price of fertiliser today. Who can afford it? It is too expensive! The Government must find a way of subsidizing the cost of inputs. Farmers must be subsidised. You can use whatever word you want to use like \"production support\" or whatever it is, but farmers must be supported for us to get enough food. Otherwise, we do not have enough. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of my colleagues has just talked about extension workers. Extension services are also a must. For me, there is no point of having officers at the headquarters here formulating policies and coming up with good ideas, and researchers doing all the work they are doing in this country if we do not have the link between the results of research and the consumers, who are the farmers. That is the agriculture that I learnt at the university. Our Government must give the Ministry of Agriculture enough money to employ extension workers. Another problem is that the Ministry does not have enough resources to employ extension workers, at least for the subsistence farmers. Other commercial large scale farmers can employ - of course they have them - their own extension workers, but the bulk of the farmers must have extension services rendered to them. So, the Treasury must avail enough money for the Ministry of Agriculture to have extension workers, otherwise we are just playing games and I do not see us getting anywhere with it. Today, the food we are producing in Kenya is the equivalent of what the US used to produce in the 19th Century. We cannot feed our people! When it comes to technology, we have very good researchers in this country, and they are doing very good work. But something has come up in the world today; it is called \"Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)\". I do not know what this thing is like to Kenyans, politicians, people in the civil society and some people who claim to be farmers, yet they do not have an acre to cultivate. They just say that we are going to kill them. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want any political leader in this country to tell me who has died when she or he fed on foodstuffs that resulted from research. Who has died; but how many people died yesterday on the roads because of automobile technology? How many died the other day? Tell me! Even here, many of us are wearing cotton fabric. Some of the beautiful shirts that we have could be made of GMO cotton. Who is complaining of body itching? Let us not block technology. The world is moving and you hear hon. Members also complaining that people are bringing bad technology here. I think it is wrong for law makers to dream of things that have never been. Let us not block technology! Biotechnology is with us; it is in the whole world; if Kenyans want to block it, it will be bad for us. The world is moving so fast away from us. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, 70 per cent of the economy of my constituency is from the sugar-cane industry. That is what we feed on. Sugar money is what took me to school because the first sugar-cane factory was put up in my constituency in the 1920s. We have problems in the sugar industry in my constituency. Miwani Sugar Factory is in receivership and it is in fact, rotting. Muhoroni Sugar Factory has been in receivership for all that time. The former Minister for Agriculture in the last Government, hon. Kirwa, said that he was going to do something to improve the status of the sugar industry in my constituency. Nothing happened until the last month of the 3056 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 28, 2008 last Government in November when they came up with the idea of selling Miwani which is a rotting factory through privatisation, but things went the wrong way. The same happened to Muhoroni. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, today, there are receiver managers on the ground but they want to change them. Is changing the management the problem? The Ministry of Agriculture must tell us the truth. Changing the receiver managers will not solve the problem of that factory. It will not! We know very well that even Miwani has been in court ever since and some people in the Kenya Sugar Board (KSB) and Ministry of Agriculture just think of changing the management. Is that the solution to the problem? Will it be the solution to sugar industry problems in Muhoroni constituency? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when they were giving a licence to a man in Kibos to put up a factory, I warned them that they were going to create problems. Yesterday, there was a physical fight between managers of Kibos and Muhoroni sugar factories over sugar-cane. Either politicians or our professionals do not want to listen to other people's advice. Now, we have a very serious problem because people literally fought yesterday. Someone was injured while fighting over sugar-cane. I told the former Minister, hon. Kirwa, that this was going to cause a big problem and now they fought yesterday. They are still going to fight and the police are involved. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I usually inform officers in the Ministry of Agriculture but they do not want to listen to me. I have also informed the KSB people and they too, do not want to listen since some of them have special interests. I hear someone has an interest of bringing back one of the former receiver managers who was kicked out because he messed up with money. The Ministry of Agriculture should be serious when it comes to addressing the problems facing the sugar industry because the same things that hon. Ruto is talking about today used to be said by hon. Kirwa. He said that we are going to privatise and do this. Was it ever done? Nothing was done. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am happy with the way he has handled the cartel of importers in the sugar industry. He has done a good job there. However, this also needs to be extended to other commodities like grains because they are causing problems to our farmers. So, let the Minister for Agriculture do things that will benefit the country. Thank you. I support the Motion."
}