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"id": 789482,
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"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I am waiting for my payment from NCPB. Sometimes people think that because we are in position of privilege, we can misuse it to get paid before others. I know there was a payment that was done in January this year, but unfortunately, I was not paid. I also met the Cabinet Secretary (CS), Treasury, with whom we come from the same area. He told me he was still waiting for his payment. I can feel the pain of the farmers who are also still waiting to be paid. We must deal with the root cause of this problem. We must deal with cartels who are messing up the maize sector in this country. Secondly, we must diversify in agriculture. I am not an expert, but the dependency on maize alone must come to an end. When I calculate what I get from my farms, what I put in and the waiting for one year, there is no profit in maize farming at all. Farmers are suffering. The maize farming is just to ensure that the land is not idle and that money is circulating. Perhaps the main responsibility of county governments in terms of agricultural extension, training and changing trends, might be to teach our people that farming maize alone is not beneficial to them. I had a very long discussion with another senior Government official who is a farmer. He told me he abandoned maize for avocado farming. He told me that from one avocado tree, he makes Kshs30,000 every three months. For anybody in maize farming to make Kshs30,000 alone in one acre after one year, you have to work so hard. Look at the Kshs60,000 that someone gets from one avocado tree; how much money would our farmers have made? I would rather in one acre, let people make Kshs1 million or Kshs3 million in a year. It is better to even buy maize cheaply from other people in other regions and let our farmers to diversify. We must make agriculture a true employer that will change lives of people. At the moment, the maize farming in this country is unsustainable, especially in Trans Nzoia County where you and I come from. With farms getting smaller, we must start diversification. Lastly, Mr. Speaker, Sir, if you want to deal with food insecurity, we must change our menu. I do not want to be misquoted like Amb. Robinson Githae. When he was a CS, he advised his people to include rats in their menu. The reality is that we cannot continue depending on maize forever and expect to solve food insecurity in this country. We must accept to eat beans, rice and other foods like in the People’s Republic of China. This is a country of 1.5 billion people. If they were only depending on one food crop like maize, they would die of hunger. They eat all kinds of food from the sea, land and air. It is important that all of us, as a nation, accept to introduce different types of food in order to deal with food insecurity. Maize and beans cannot grow all over the country. They only grow in some regions. We must make agriculture very competitive. From the conversation that I had with the person who told me about avocadoes, I realised that it has just been a mess wasting land for nothing. If young people can be introduced to avocadoes, passion fruits and all kinds of horticultural crops, they will be able to make a lot of money from agriculture. Agriculture can be a great employer and sort out unemployment issues across the country, if we move from maize farming to better and more competitive crops. 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."
}