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{
    "id": 565646,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/565646/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 370,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sang",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 907,
        "legal_name": "Stephen Kipyego Sang",
        "slug": "stephen-kipyego-sang"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I join a number of the Members who have contributed to this Bill. I support this Bill and congratulate the Mover. We have had a lot of amendment Bills in this House and quite a few concrete Bills of this nature. A country that is not food secure cannot claim to be proud of being a nation. The responsibility of every Government and leadership is to ensure that their citizens are food secure. A lot of the challenges that this country has faced in terms of the governance structures and poverty issues, have contributed to food insecurity. When this country decided to go into a devolved system of Government, and this has been highlighted by Sen. Ong’era; that we now have two Governments; the national and county Government. The wisdom behind our country agreeing that we need to devolve agriculture was because we needed to find a mechanism of ensuring that we have a governance structure at the local level that would respond to a number of issues, look at the environmental situations within the county, identify the food crops that could survive well within the local areas and identify the priority areas that they need to support to ensure that the citizens within our counties are food secure. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as much as agriculture and issues of food production in this country are largely a devolved function, the President and the national Government still have the responsibility in terms of policy formulation, which I think is being addressed in this Bill. If you look at the national budget that was considered by the National Assembly just the other day, it saddens to see that even with the fact that this country ratified and was part and parcel of the Maputo Declaration that requested countries in Africa to allocate at least 15 per cent of their national budget to agriculture, this country is still way behind at about 6 per cent. We must decide as a country that food security is a priority and therefore, this should be seen even in the national budget that is being considered. If you look at the national budget, a lot of resources were given to some sectors that may not merit the amount of resources that were given to them, while the agricultural 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."
}