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"content": "For example, the potato farmers in my county of Nakuru produce a lot of potatoes yet they do not benefit from their efforts. As much as they put so much energy, time and basically their whole livelihoods into it, they barely get anything from it due to exploitation by the middlemen who come and buy the potatoes from them at throw-away prices. In addition to that, they also have an issue of using what they call a dusra in packaging of their potatoes. For those of you, maybe, who are not from potato growing counties, it is a bag that is about twice my size which the middlemen use to measure the potatoes and hence the farmers are left without having added any value to their lives. They are just left at a very disadvantaged and impoverished state, yet they work very hard and they have been working hard since the day they became productive with their lives until the end of it. They work constantly and continuously but they are very impoverished. So, if we can do better, then we shall really improve the livelihoods of our people in our counties and the country at large. Therefore, Sen. (Prof.) Ongeri, I really do appreciate the passion that you bring to this subject matter. Even as we discuss these issues, we need also to focus on the big dams that we have talked about in this Irrigation Policy. We know that, as a country, rains have not been very consistent. Therefore, a lot of farmers cannot be very productive because no matter what they plant, the rains fail and there is nothing to harvest. We have also seen the pastoral communities losing a lot of their livestock due to lack of rains and water. So, dams definitely become a big equation in this problem. But I completely agree with you that environmental assessments must then be done. I would be worried and shocked if they are not doing this, yet we hear that the cost for building these big dams is about Kshs 10 billion, Kshs 19 billion or Kshs 20 billion onwards and there are also smaller dams. Therefore, I hope that there must be a requirement of environmental assessment. These dams must also be distributed across the country from the arid to semi-arid areas and all the areas of the country. This will ensure that every Kenyan is able to live in a place where, despite the harsh weather conditions, they are able to practice agriculture, leading to improved food production and have food for everybody in our country. Thank you very much, Sen. Cherargei, for that very passionate discussion, especially on the employment angle to this Irrigation Policy. If we do it properly, we shall then be able to create employment opportunities for the youth and the people of our country. When everybody is self-reliant, we will have happy families and homes since everybody will be able to eat, have clothing, educate their kids, et cetera . It is in the big scheme of extremely important things which we are trying to do here. It is also extremely important that we concentrate and do more on increasing the arable lands that we have in this country. We probably have not been able to even get--- Like we said from the statistics, we are probably at about 30 per cent and globally it is about 50 per cent. But if we are only at 30 per cent, it means that there is a lot of room for improvement so that then, as a country, we can have better food production for our very fast growing population. There was the contribution from the Senator for Tana River County on the irrigation schemes that are in that area, which are extremely helpful. If we go in that The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}