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    "content": "passed and the pieces of legislation that are spread out in almost all the arms of Government. That will take us somewhere. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, even as we support this, Kenyans need an attitude change. In Kenya, it looks like anything foreign goes, even if it is of a low quality. Just brand anything and say: “Imported from space or from wherever”, people will buy it and leave the natural product which is of a higher quality from Kenya. Therefore, we need to love the brand Kenya. We need to appreciate products that come from our nation, so that in that appreciation, we help to sustain our investors and those products that are produced in Kenya. We also need to have incentives for farmers. The Senator who spoke before me has already talked about this. We also need the national Government to work very closely with research institutions to compel county governments to undertake research on the kinds of soils that are contained per county, so that any investor who goes to, for example, Turkana, Kwale, Kilifi, Siaya or Nairobi counties, finds a blue print on the types of soils, what is able to grow in that place and the climatic conditions. With that kind of blue print available to investors, it is also a form of incentive. If the national Government can put it as a policy that all the county governments should undertake a soil sampling strategy so that they have all the details and data to give to any prospective investors, that will be an incentive. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to add my voice on the issue of land in Kenya. We need to be careful on this issue. I do not see any foreign investors coming to Kenya. Why should you come to Kenya and buy land at Kshs300 million when Uganda is giving you land for free and you just construct your industry? You are buying land for Kshs900 million to put up a factory that is going to employ Kenyans. When Sen. Orengo was the Minister for Lands, he tried to ensure that land reforms take root. But if we do not revisit the issue of land tenure in Kenya and especially now that we have these devolved units, we might have some strange land policies coming from certain counties where they might insist that you can only be given land to invest if you come from that particular county or if you have some real connections by virtue of birth. That will kill development. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also need to develop a comprehensive and practical marketing strategy for investors and farmers. In the absence of that, anybody can produce anything. But if there is no comprehensive marketing strategy to support these initiatives, then that effort will die. We need to help our farmers and small-scale investors sell their produce both locally and internationally. We also need to undertake reforms to remove constraints, for example, in the area of transportation. If farmers will spend about 50 per cent of their income transporting their produce from the farm to the market or between markets, then this is not viable. A lot of our small scale farmers do a lot of inter-market and intra-market business, between the rural areas and the urban areas. If this kind of transportation is not taken care of, there will be a problem. Our small scale farmers really fend for themselves. You find a woman with ten sacks of mangoes besides a road and almost pleading for two days, by which time, the mangoes are all rotten. Maybe we need a policy or some kind of transportation mechanism meant just for farm produce. 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"
}