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{
    "id": 526388,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/526388/?format=api",
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    "content": "stalks away to go feed their animals and leave you with nothing. These are the things that we need to address. However, as we do so, something that I want to urge the Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries to look at is Clause 18. The proponent of the Bill is proposing to create County Potato Committees. Unless you qualify, you will be opening an avenue for eating chips. Potatoes being legumes grow in areas where soils are soft; where there is rain and water. Owing to the desire for people to eat, you will find people setting up County Potato Committees even in areas where no potato is grown to give jobs to their friends and appeal for public funds. You will find a County Potato Committee in Kericho where they grow tea. You will find a County Potato Committee in Marsabit where what is best done there is ranching and other arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) farming. You will find the country starting to engage in obscenities like what we saw in the days of opulence in Saudi Arabia where instead of importing wheat, simply because they had a lot of money, they started growing wheat in the desert at a cost five to ten times higher than the cost of growing wheat in areas where it can be grown. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I want the Committee to qualify that the County Potato Committees will be established where necessary and not everywhere. If you leave it open like this, you will find that in areas where there is no single tuber of potato you have committees. That is how we have perfected the art of creating jobs for our kinsmen regardless of whether they add value to our economy or not. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, equally important is the area of research for continuous quality control and improvement which the Bill provides for. When you set up the Potato Research Council or something like that, there should be a role being played by the Agricultural Fisheries and Food Authority (AFFA). This is where regulatory bodies in agriculture, particularly crop agriculture have been amalgamated under one law. I, therefore, encourage the Mover to find a way of having a nexus between the existence of AFFA; the research structure and the regulatory structure that is put in the Bill. At the end of the day, it is unlikely that the National Government will accept to have a new regulatory body when they have already collapsed the pyrethrum board, coffee, tea and all the research groupings and regulatory bodies into one. I encourage that we move in that direction. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, equally important is the question of packaging. Packaging of potatoes should not be limited to the 50 kilogramme bags. We are moving to levels of standardisation where food crops are taken to supermarkets for the single consumer who wants to go to Uchumi, Naivas, Nakumatt supermarkets or any other retail outlet to just pick enough for the family. Therefore, we need provision where you can have packages of 50 kilogrammes, 25 kilogrammes, 10 kilogrammes down up to 2 kilogrammes depending on the needs of those buying. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we have even moved to an area where packaging can be done for ready to eat products. This is where you go to a supermarket, you buy something, take home and you warm it up and put it on the table for the family. So I encourage the Committee to check on packaging. 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."
}