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"id": 508192,
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"speaker_name": "Sen. (Eng.) Muriuki",
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"legal_name": "Stephen Muriuki Ngare",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I will determine what to leave out. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we produce in Kenya 1.8 million tonnes or thereabouts of potatoes as a crop and food item. If you compare it with maize, at 3.5 million tonnes – as per the statistics of 2012 – that places potatoes at number two staple food. Even if you compare it with other food crops like wheat, at 285,000 tonnes, and rice, at 146,000 tonnes, you will know that potatoes are very important. However, the current farming of potatoes is really discouraging to farmers. There are a lot of challenges. It would have been good to describe every one of them, but in the interest of time, I will mention them generally. Due to the perishable nature of potatoes, there are a lot of issues in it. The principal one is that the value chain time is only two or three days as compared to products like maize, which can be consumed even next year if it is harvested now. That perishable nature of potatoes poses a lot of challenges to the farmers. The Bill seeks to address most of these challenges. I would like to read the objects and purposes of this Bill as listed in Clause 3. It says:- (i) regulate production packaging, processing, marketing of potatoes and generally regulate the industry; (ii) promote the production and use by farmers of high quality seed potatoes; (iii) improve the production in terms of quality and quantity of potatoes in the country; and, (iv) improve efficiency of potato farming. There is also “induce self-regulation across the industry,” which the Committee on Agriculture had a quarrel with. I agreed that it be deleted when it comes to the amendments. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, much as the Bill has taken a bit of time, it has successfully gone through the various stages, more so, a very successful public hearing which attracted a lot of interest from potato farmers, potato farmers organizations, dealers and research people. More importantly, the Government itself did send a senior representative from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries. The Committee has looked at quite a lot of issues raised during the public hearings, among them the Government’s suggestion that instead of the committee or board which we had suggested comprising 15 members, it should have nine members. The Committee has already tabled its Report which contains a number of amendments and I, as the sponsor, have agreed, in principle, to all of them. So, we are in concurrence. Due to the perishable nature of potatoes, there are few farmers or none that I am aware of who are really large-scale farmers. As a result, the farmers are prone to being played around with by all manner of middlemen. We start off with the farmland brokers, then we have the buyers and transporters. There are no standards as to the weighing of potatoes from farms. The brokers buy potatoes from farmers without them. They decide on a particular size of bag. The Government has attempted to put in place some weighing standards, but they have not been properly policed. Since there is no regulatory body at 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."
}