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{
    "id": 392159,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/392159/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 172,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13156,
        "legal_name": "Mutula Kilonzo Jnr",
        "slug": "mutula-kilonzo-jnr"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, I rise to support Sen. Muthama’s Motion. I will start by saying that this Motion touches me on a personal level because my late father was educated using proceeds from coffee. The coffee is still in bonding and my father was growing it as a hobby because it was not making any money. I have a feeling that I will continue doing so as a hobby if this Motion by Sen. Muthama does not see the light of day. More importantly, I would like to say that unknown to many people, the coffee that is grown in high altitude areas including Kangundo, Mbooni and Makueni is of very high quality but the farmers who grow this coffee do not get any value for money as a result of which you find that most of these people are now growing coffee for the sake of it as opposed to very serious agriculture. The only factory I know in Mbooni is a coffee factory because coffee is the only crop that they have. Most of the coffee farmers in those areas continue to wallow in poverty because they do not get value for money. This is also something of concern because if we have to create wealth for purposes of counties, it is important that this crop that most farmers are growing is then used to create wealth. The other day, courtesy of Sen. Orengo, I had the privilege of over-flying the Mau Escarpment and there was a lot of tea that I saw. Tea occupies a lot of arable land in Kenya. This is a matter of national importance. Under Schedule 4, particularly paragraph 29, the national Government has an obligation to come up with what they are calling an agricultural policy. I am not sure what policy they have with regard to marketing of tea or the growing of coffee. Although Sen. Muthama has proposed that they come up with a strategy, I think that we should improve this even more because we have left these issues to the Government for too long and they do not seem interested. It is possible from what I have seen from this Motion; I would propose that Sen. Muthama, any other Senator or the Committee in charge, should look at this issue in detail. I have information from my friends and from the people who I was advising in regard to the Coffee Act that, in fact, there is a problem even at the auction. The problem at the auction has to be solved because if we did some research on coffee, we will find that our coffee is of high quality but people who grow it are not benefitting. We should go a step further and check what the market prices in the world are with regard to our coffee and we will discover that we are the losers. So, other than suggesting that they come up with a strategy, we must implore the Government to come up with policies. Madam Temporary Speaker, in terms of fertilizer, for the coffee that we are growing in Mbooni, I can assure you that subsidizing it and giving them fertilizer is not going to help. I have realized that the more fertilizer we put vis-à-vis the returns that you get, still does not help. Unless we look at the prices, even if we subsidize the fertilizer, the farmer is still not going to benefit. In the developed world, instead of the government coming up with a policy on marketing, the government buys the coffee, markets it and benefits the farmer. The governments then take over the responsibility of farming by providing facilities like extension services, fertilizer, mechanization, and then buy the coffee from the farmers. Once that happens, the overall beneficiary of this is the farmer. Although I am supporting the Motion, I want to say that the marketing of this product is not good enough. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}