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{
"id": 942342,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/942342/?format=api",
"text_counter": 170,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Tigania West, JP",
"speaker_title": "Hon. John Mutunga",
"speaker": {
"id": 13495,
"legal_name": "John Kanyuithia Mutunga",
"slug": "john-kanyuithia-mutunga"
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"content": "we have in Kenya of land segmentation and increase in the population of farmers. Incidentally, we appear satisfied with that yet our farmers are small-scale. Therefore, they need to be organised because they are disadvantaged. The reforms in the Kenyan agricultural sector ought to borrow from reforms that have taken place in other countries. Reforms in other countries started many years ago. For example, there is the United Kingdom (UK) Agrarian Reform that took place in the 17th Century. It brought together small-scale farmers who were scattered just as we are today and formed a production method that still sustains their industrial development. In Finland, the same occurred in 1757 to 1848. In Italy, it happened from 1806 to 1861. The most recent to experience this is Brazil in Latin America where most of our agricultural stakeholders go to bench mark. It occurred 55 years after the agrarian revolution from 1985 to 1990. In Chile, the same occurred in 1973. In China, it happened recently. It is happening now, as we speak, in Vietnam. Hon. Speaker, the Kenyan key actors in the agricultural sector are privy to the fact that we have studied those systems with a lot of envy. A key component in the agrarian reform is the capture of the database of farmers, what they do, how they do it, and what needs to be done to inform the follow-up process. The database will include the name of the farmer, the locality, the enterprise origin of choice, the holding units, levels of education, demands for resources, input types and quantities, mechanisms of acquisition of the inputs, and the ecology. The information above shows the levels of integration into the agricultural sector provided in the value chain. We will need to wake up to the reality that farmers need to be organised for them to grow from small to big. Farming has also been promoted as a business for a long time in this country. However, that ends up as a statement, that is, farming should be business. We know businesses have input and output domains. We must be clear on how we need to transform our agriculture into business. Without capturing farmers’ data base, we will only plan to fail because we will not have planned properly with the data. Farming, being a long term process, needs to be well planned as a formidable business process. The African Union Agricultural Agenda speaks to this fact. The Nepal agricultural agenda is captured under what is called the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme commonly known as CADP. CADP remains an operational framework for the African countries to be able to interpret and apply, so that they develop agriculture effectively. This will help steer growth and development of their countries. CADP prescribes a set of indicators for growth and development of the agricultural sector of all the countries that will be signed to this process. I want to report that Kenya is a signatory Member of African Union (AU). So, it is signed up for CADP. The reporting mechanism is consultative and collaborative. Where farmers are not organised, their input is always mixed up in such a reporting mechanism. Kenya has considerably interpreted CADP through the transformation of the objectives of the agricultural development sector strategy which were made CADP-compliant in 2010. That was the mother of the agricultural sector development strategy. Through the framework of action in Maputo in 2003, which the African heads of States signed, including Kenya, the African heads of States committed themselves to support agriculture by up to 10 per cent of their national budget come the year 2008. That was five years later. That declaration was signed up by the heads of States and governments and they committed themselves to the African Agricultural Development agenda. If farmers were registered, they would have effectively lobbied to achieve this agenda in 2008. Because farmers are not organised in this country, they do not have a strong voice, therefore, they are not able to move their agenda effectively. The same initiative was formed into a more laudable and actionable 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."
}