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{
    "id": 788112,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/788112/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 148,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Nyoro",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13370,
        "legal_name": "Samson Ndindi Nyoro",
        "slug": "samson-ndindi-nyoro"
    },
    "content": "Thank you very much, Hon. Deputy Speaker, for reminding my colleague 001, that being 001 does not give him the role of the Speaker of this House. The Speaker is executing his role very ably. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this Bill. I am very grateful because I come from a county that is very agricultural in nature. At the outset, I want to note that in 1966, arable land in Kenya was around 6.1 per cent of all the land mass in this country. It now stands at around 10.6 per cent. Only 10.6 per cent of the Kenyan land mass is arable land. The increment is because we have cultivated our forests and gone some miles into mechanising our farming. In the same breath, we have also seen a rise in our population and that is why since 1963, when we were food-sufficient - currently, even with a lot of resources going into agriculture, and especially mechanising and more so in irrigation, we are now a food-deficient country. Even with all the projects that we are engaging in, especially the Government, there is nothing much a country can do when we have a hungry population. Even from the ancient war times, the generals always put a lot of consideration into the stomachs of the soldiers as they went to battle. The battle that we now have as a country is an economic one. The world has changed and progressed. The competition across many nations in the world is of an economic nature. There is nothing much we can do economically if our people - the battalions who are the citizens of this country - are hungry. Our Government is doing a lot. In my constituency, there are two projects, one funded by the National Irrigation Board to a tune of Kshs320 million for irrigation in a place called Local 20. There is also another one in my constituency being funded by the World Bank to a tune of Kshs400 million. We can see the Government is really allocating a lot of resources into bridging the gap in terms of food security. Irrigation does a lot when embraced. First of all, it increases the productivity of irrigated areas because per capita, comparatively, irrigated land produces more than one that is not irrigated in many facets. When we embrace irrigation, we are able to do more multiple cropping. When we rely on natural rainfall, we can only farm and till our land seasonally. But when we embrace artificial rainfall or artificial provisions of water, namely, irrigation, we are able to engage in multiple cropping in our areas. Irrigation converts a lot of land that previously would not have been arable into land that can be farmed. Our country has a lot of land mass. However, the land that we are able to till, especially using rains, is only a small proportion. Therefore, embracing irrigation would convert more hectares and acreages of land into productive land. Also, we are able to reduce erratic output in our agriculture when we embrace irrigation because basing our agriculture on rainfall is very risky. There are a lot of limitations, especially in the Kenyan setup in matters irrigation and especially given the NIB projects. One of them is us having so many incomplete projects. Like in my place, there is one project called Mugoiri-Murika that was being implemented by NIB. As you know, irrigation projects only give utility to the farmers if they are complete. A lot of resources are put into projects and if they are not completed, that money goes to waste. We have that challenge and we hope that the new outfit that we are creating in this Bill will always allocate resources to projects up to completion. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}