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{
    "id": 897007,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/897007/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 268,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Githunguri, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gabriel Kago",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13343,
        "legal_name": "Gabriel Kago Mukuha",
        "slug": "gabriel-kago-mukuha"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me this opportunity to also add my voice on the President’s Speech during the State of the Nation Address. To begin with, the President recognised our great men and women of various disciplines in this nation who have kept the Kenyan flag flying high at international events and bringing glory to our nation. The President recognised Mwalimu Peter Tabichi, who was voted as the best teacher in the whole world. That is a clear indication that Kenya can even do better than what we are today. On agriculture, the President noted that it is the largest employer in the economy accounting to over 60 per cent of the total employment. When we do the Budget, we give agriculture too little. For us to feel the President’s Big Four Agenda, one being food, security and nutrition for all, we need to allocate enough money to agriculture. According to the Maputo Declaration, agriculture should be allocated not less than 10 per cent. However, in the last Budget, we only allocated 2 per cent, which is far below. Still on agriculture, the President said that the Ministry has constructed 4,400 water pans, which will place over 6,000 acres under irrigation and we really appreciate. If you are doing irrigation and we are not supporting the farmer with whatever he or she has harvested, post- harvest loses will be big and this country cannot achieve food security. We need to support the farmer to avoid post-harvest loses. On the coffee subsector, the President said that there will be rehabilitation of over 500 pulping stations in the 31 coffee growing counties. The problem that coffee farmers face is not rehabilitation of pulping stations, it is market. Since time immemorial, we have seen our coffee farmers being misused by cartels and brokers. Unless we help the farmers to sell their coffee directly to the consumer, even if we give them subsidies and rehabilitate coffee factories, we will not do much to our farmers. On the issue of milk and eggs, I did not hear the President give a lot of attention to our dairy and poultry farmers. The two agricultural products that we produce in excess in this country are eggs and milk. We have seen milk coming all the way from our neighbouring countries which has killed our dairy industry. I expected the President to talk about the measure that we will put in place in order to help our farmers not to close down their farming businesses. Kenya is importing eggs all the way from China."
}