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{
    "id": 770045,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/770045/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 268,
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    "content": "harvesting and using rain water so that we can increase the irrigation base areas. We also need to think of even irrigating more of our arid and semi-arid areas. Today when you read from social media and listen to media, there is a huge outcry from the pastoralist communities, especially from my county of Kajiado and the rest. They are crying of hunger because of the long dry spells. As a country, we need to look at how to feed our population without relying on rain fed crops or rain fed production. As citizens of this country, we need to think of how to produce rather than just depending on service production alone. Today we see our young people running to urban areas and opening small kiosks for M-Pesa and Information Communication Technology (ICT) but we no longer see people selling food and doing production from farms. I thank the Ministry of Education Science and Technology for having thought of putting emphasis on agriculture in the new curriculum, which I encourage the country to implement. It is because it is high time we made our children believe that food production or agriculture is also a very important sector for the growth of the country just like any other sectors. It is also a high time our population believed that they can be employed in farming. When we were young, we used to produce foodstuff in our parent’s farms. We would help them and there was adequate food and we never used to experience the hunger that is being experienced today. It is high time that as a country, we do more irrigation so that we employ our youth. We can also get sufficient food for the growing population and export rather than importing every now and then. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as a country, we also need to look at putting a lot of funds in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries both in the national and county level. Now that agriculture is a county function, we need to encourage county governments, in conjunction with the national Government, to put a lot of funds in food production. This is also in terms of water because water and irrigation go together. Without water, we cannot irrigate. However, I believe that if we think critically as a country on how to harvest rain water, we can get sufficient water to irrigate our arid and semi-arid areas so that we can have food production. It is high time this Policy was implemented and the national and county governments should follow up to make sure that we have strategies. We also need to zone our country into agricultural and industrial areas so that we can have all sectors growing. When you travel across Kenya today, you see many industries coming up but you rarely see people doing farming both rain fed crop production or even irrigation. We need to look into how to encourage the population to do farming, either rain fed or irrigation. It is high time this House made sure that every county looks into which areas can be irrigated because the moment we have food being produced in Kajiado Makueni, Kitui and all other counties, we shall be able to feed the population. We will then end up with a healthy population that feeds well. When you walk around our towns and urban areas today, you get many young people only eating chips, maandazi and cakes. This might also be the cause of all these ailments that we see today. Many people are sick and unhealthy because we no longer have fresh food from farms. Most of our population today feeds on vegetables that have The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}