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{
    "id": 786371,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/786371/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 252,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, I had earlier on made my observation that if we are not careful, tea will then be the next pyrethrum in this country. We all remember that at one particular time, pyrethrum farmers were among the most celebrated agricultural practitioners in this country. Thanks to the mismanagement of the sector and people not speaking out at the right time, that sector collapsed and there are very few farmers. I cannot even recall a county that practices pyrethrum farming as their main stay. Tea farming has faced the same challenges. Watching the trend in the last 10 years, if we are not careful and if we do not speak up, we are soon going to have a near or total collapse of this extremely important and critical sector, which is the main stay of our economy. Madam Temporary Speaker, many are the times we attend seminars in hotels with very good headlines and themes. When you listen to the statistics that are given out by the Ministry of Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries and the Kenya Tea Development Association (KTDA); they tell you that tea is now, after tourism, the second leading foreign exchange earner in our country. They will also tell you that, last year, tea earned this country Ksh130 billion worth of Gross domestic product (GDP), which is four per cent of our nation’s GDP. By any ordinary standards, these are rosy and extremely good statistics. Unfortunately, the same does not translate into earnings in the pockets of farmers. Most of these farmers wake up very early, leave everything behind and, on a daily basis, from Monday to Saturday; from very cold mornings up to late in the afternoon, they work and 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."
}