Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 526384,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/526384/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 216,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "The Senate Minority Leader (",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Sen. Wetangula): Thank you Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. I will be fairly brief. This is a Bill that seeks to bring some order and regulation to a crop that has been neglected and yet it is a crop that has immense food value in this country. In this country every time we talk of famine and food shortage it begins and ends with lack of cereals; maize to be exact. You will find our brothers and sisters in the Arid and Semi Arid Lands (ASAL) are being ravaged by famine, serious lack of food and nutrition and yet in areas like where you come from, the County of Migori, Bungoma, Trans-Nzoia, Uasin Gishu and Nandi, you will find our poor mothers sitting with food by the roadside – bananas, potatoes and all other legumes – from morning to evening, racing after every car that will stop to see whether there will be a benevolent buyer or not. It is desirable and important that we bring some legal framework that would help the potato farmer. But first and foremost, we need to look at the post harvest management and value chain process. That is why I support the issue of packaging. Whether you are talking of Nyandarua or Webuye in Bungoma, middlemen who are hardly ever straight, turn up with their lorries. What they call a bag of potatoes is actually two bags of potatoes because they will put one bag and then turn another and fill it as well and they pay for the price of one. Since the farmer is desperate he will carry the load of potatoes to the roadside market. When he imagines that you cannot sell and that you have to carry it back home, they just sell it at a throw away price. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, now that agriculture is a devolved function, I want to encourage that areas where such crops are grown---. These are perishable and their shelf life is not the same as grain. A potato shelf life will probably be a week; a banana shelf life would probably be two weeks depending on the time of harvest and the time of maturity of the crop. We want to see the Bill provide for storage and not just storage by putting up"
}