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{
    "id": 518332,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/518332/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 229,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "content": "as it is known in Nyandarua. That leads me to the next issue, which is the structuring and diversification of the market. This market must also be based on value addition. As you know, potatoes and bananas can be transformed into chips or dry potatoes and bananas. The chips that we eat at Kenchic are extremely unhealthy, because they are dipped in oil for a long time. Sometimes you are not quite sure what type of oil is being used. I have heard that one of the reasons some people break into transformers in the countryside is to bleed them off oil. They then use that oil for making potato chips. You and I then go and eat these chips, essentially eating what is carcinogenic or cancer-causing. So, I would not like us to go that direction. I would like us to eat the dry potatoes or bananas where value has been added; not necessarily chips. If you go to supermarkets, you will find dry vegetables and bananas without too much salt and additives. Indeed, in the western world, in the health food markets, chips and such like food are actually banished. You have dry food with value addition, purely to last long so that the market can be diversified and, therefore, give more time for farmers to produce and sell their goods. One area which this country should invest in is the production of greenhouses. At the moment, greenhouses are seen as elite agriculture. Indeed, we know what is happening to global warming and now we more or less live in an oven in Kenya, because of the unusual heat that has hit the whole Republic. Imagine what is happening to plants and agricultural produce. Logically, if we think that in future, we are still going to rely on rain-fed agriculture, there is going to be less rain and we will have to vary the kind of production that we are engaged in. We must get crops which are more weather-resistant and depend on less water. So, we may have to move from potatoes to cassava, which requires less water. It is not bad to produce cassava, but the kind of starch that it has is very different from the starch and other relevant things that are available in potatoes. We need to begin thinking of amendments as the Bill goes to the Third Reading. When new technology comes in and you want to valorize or popularize it, you cannot avoid the Government coming in as state capital. I would propose, if the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries is listening to me, that now they should get themselves involved in intensive research on greenhouse production, that is accessible to the ordinary farmer; not what we have now which is mainly for elite farmers. I think this will help in making sure that peasant agriculture is more productive and when markets are created, they are not limited to when the weather permits---"
}