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{
    "id": 403699,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/403699/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 110,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "country that needs food security. This is Kenya. Many times when I go round, I wonder whether we practice what we see out there. Recently, I accompanied the President to China. I was amazed to see that China is a country with a population of 1.4 billion and yet, it can feed its population. The whole population of the Africa Continent is 1 billion. So, we are trying to say that China, as a country, not just a sub-continent, can feed more people than the total population of Africa. If that is happening, then there has to be something we can learn from China and India which also has a big population. I think Indians are more than 1.2 billion. We need to practice what they do there instead of lamenting about our people and prices. We need to come up with policies so that we help our people. These are the policies that are being used elsewhere and I do not see why they cannot be used here in Kenya. I am talking from the background of a farmer. This country has farmers who really suffer. We have people with full potential who can grow cash crops, but at the end of the day, farmers get peanuts. Recently, we were talking about tea farmers getting extra bonuses. To date, farmers from those areas are filling loan forms so that they can educate their children next year and even buy clothes for Christmas since most of the money they got out of the bonus went to the loans they had borrowed. The money went into meeting the high cost of production. This is all meant to frustrate farmers. So, if farmers are frustrated and yet they form the bulk of the population, then what are we doing when we say that we are protecting our people? We are not doing anything. I thought that this kind of Motion, which has been brought by the able Senator from a region which grows this kind of crop, needs to come up with a Senatorial team which will investigate and find out why we cannot feed our people. I am fond of giving examples. If China can feed 1.4 billion and still export part of its rice to Kenya, why can we not do it? The reason is that our production is low just because our cost of production is high. When it comes to real production, our farmers get very little. We are subjected to a lot of climatic changes and vagaries of weather that affect farmers. The tea crop can be very good at one time, but next time you see it, it will have been affected by blight or frost. If you are from the area that I come from, you will wake up and find that birds have eaten all the rice. What happens to the rice farmers? Why can the farmers not be protected by the Government? Even after production, part of the money goes to sales and that is how we get revenue and talk about foreign exchange. That is why we talk about exports and agro-based industries and the cottage industries. There is no way we will not talk about industrialization and value added industries. We have cottages in India where they grow and process some of their products on the roads. They are comfortable because they can pay people. They can sell and make money out of it. That is how we want our country to be. The only problem is that even where they get credit like the AFC, you will find that farmers are exploited. The interest rates are equally high. Even after that, you will find that once they borrow money, they do not get it. It is given to the big farmers. Some people do not even use it for production. These are some of the loopholes that the Committee should seal. Once we are serious and give the farmers the right assistance in terms of money, I am sure our country will be self sufficient. We will also have food security and part of it will also remain for export. 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"
}