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{
    "id": 62146,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/62146/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 335,
    "type": "other",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "wrong attitude. As a country, we were born and have continued to grow to believe that our job is to buy and sell. So, we are fixated as a merchandising country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the amount of money that the Government spends on buying fertilizer every year is not a revolving fund, it is an expenditure that goes every year; once off, once off. I want to thank the Ministry of Agriculture. Even in my constituency, I occasionally see some bags of fertilizer. But the wisdom of this Motion begs a lot of questions. Annually we normally have hunger and drought. The Government response to this usually is very appalling, because in the event that there is hunger biting, you will hear that there is a crisis Cabinet meeting or you will hear that a Cabinet sub-committee has been set up. As predictable as usual, the only resolution that they come up with is that, we need to cut our budgets or expenditures and take austerity measures so that we can create money to import food. I think time has come that we must now provide permanent solutions to our recurrent problems. One way of doing that is to secure our food security by ensuring that we have a fertilizer factory. The other problem we have in this country is that everybody seems to be fixated on growing maize. We know that different parts of this country have potential for different productivities. It is imperative that the research organs of this country are put into use for the benefit of Kenyans. I know KARI is doing a good job but most Kenyans do not know that KARI exists. If they know that KARI exists, they do not know for what purpose it exists. KARI needs to be taken to the people so that, for example, the people of Baringo can grow their mangoes, the people of West Pokot can grow their oranges and the people of Rangwe can grow their groundnuts. We need to really come up with a map in this country that says which crops can do well where and under what facilities. I am aware of a firm that was adversely mentioned here; the Amiran Kenya which is doing very well in the field of agriculture. I am aware that when you talk of tomatoes, there can be as many varieties as there are various climatic conditions in this country. What the Government of Kenya has failed to do is to ensure that our country is reliant by investing in agriculture. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have heard of Ministries being frequented by business persons who want to import and who want to sell to cut deals. It is time that we focused on the innovation on our human capital. It is by investing in human capital that we will have researchers and agriculturalists that will grow crops in North Eastern to feed our population in that area. As the Mover of the Motion has rightly put it; we know we have had investment in Eldoret to produce bullets. The greatest threat this country is suffering from is not a threat from external aggression but a threat from hunger and yet very little investment has gone in that direction. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with this Motion, I pray that the Ministry of Agriculture will be persuaded to persuade the Treasury. Through the Budget Committee, we want to commit ourselves into ensuring that we allocate adequate funding to the Ministry of Agriculture. The Maputo Declaration says that we need to allocate 10 per cent of our Budget on agriculture. We are far from this. Most developing countries have a huge chunk of their budgets in research. Our budget in research is still lagging and what we hear of them is that money is normally taken for research purposes and it is brought back through the back door and spent elsewhere."
}