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"content": "possessed. We must constantly guard against this. That is why, even as I reluctantly appreciate the creation of this Board, the history of boards in this country has not been very good. You know the stories of the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya, the Coffee Marketing Board and all manner of boards. Men and women sat here on the Coffee Marketing Board leaking the cream of the poor farmer in the village, who spends the whole day toiling and moiling on a coffee plantation. At the end of the day, you find a man in Nairobi with a big stomach who has never planted coffee and who calls himself a coffee entrepreneur. He does not even call himself a farmer. You ask him what he does and he cannot explain but he has millions of shillings from the sweat of the farmer. We must avoid this. Even when you look at the crop farmers in this country, look at the mess that is the tea industry today, because fertiliser will go to tea as well and the politicization to the tea industry. How do you explain the bonus of tea in some section of the country, they are paying Kshs25 per kilogramme and in other sections they are paying Ksh8 per kilogramme and it is the same tea. This is called politicization of our economy and marginalization of regions of this country, because the tea of this country is tea of this country. How do you explain that at Nyansiongo Tea Factory, the farmer is getting bonus of Kshs8 per kilogramme and another farmer in another factory elsewhere is getting Kshs26 kilogramme? What morale are we giving to the farmer? You will find the Kshs8 bonus per kilogramme, then they start screening off, administration, fertiliser that was advanced and the farmer ends up getting nothing. Sen. (Dr.) Boni Khalwale and I represent sugar cane growers. There is nobody abused in this country more than the sugar cane farmer. In fact, today if you go to the sugar-belt, even a person who has never gone to school knows something called “DR,” because you plant your cane, you weed, re-weed, you eventually harvest and take it to the factory; when you go there to earn your money, they tell you, in fact, you owe us this much, your account is “DR”, debit. So, in the village, when we are at home, every morning there are a hundred people at your door, saying “ mheshimiwa, I took my sugar cane to the factory and I got “DR”. What are we doing to the farmers? You find people who have never grown sugar cane are the ones who are licking the sucrose content from the farmer. One day, the farmers of this country will wake up and it will be very unpleasant to these fat cats because you can cheat some people sometimes, but you cannot cheat all the people all the time. The farmers will stand up and say enough is enough. If we have proper policies, how do you explain a farmer planting and harvesting maize, the maize is brought to Nairobi, milled, packaged and it is taken back and he/she buys a packet of unga at ten times the cost of his/her maize. If you go to Europe, the people who play golf, go to clubs and who enjoy life are farmers because the State cares about farmers. It is time that we, as a country, started caring about farmers. Perhaps, this is a good start, there is room for improvement but let us at least give the farmers the basic ingredient of farming which is fertiliser. I hope that at some point, the Committees will come up with the question of the quality and the prices of seeds and crops that the farmers will be using with the fertiliser. Let me give room for others to contribute, I beg to support. 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"
}