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{
    "id": 977164,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/977164/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 292,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mukurweini, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Anthony Kiai",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13439,
        "legal_name": "Anthony Githiaka Kiai",
        "slug": "anthony-githiaka-kiai"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. From the outset, I stand to support this Report by the Committee. Kenya’s economy is agrarian in nature, and 27 per cent of the country’s GDP comes from agriculture. Indeed, 27 per cent is direct from agriculture. If you add the ripple effects, you realise that the sector employs about 40 per cent of Kenyans. If you do the linkages, you will find that 70 per cent of Kenyans, especially in the rural areas, are employed by agriculture. Given the statistics, it would be prudent for the Government to invest heavily in the agriculture sector. But that is not what happens. Every year, we see reduction of the agriculture budget by the Government. It goes against the Maputo Declaration, which we are a signatory to, which recommends 10 per cent of the national budget to go to agriculture. This is not happening in Kenya. We give only between 2.5 per cent and 2.9 per cent. Coffee production in Kenya has been declining. In the 1980s, coffee used to be one of the largest foreign exchange earners in Kenya. I remember in the 1980s we hit around 130,000 metric tonnes. But with the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement (ICA) in 1999, the decline started. Right now, we are at about 40,000 metric tonnes. What happened after that? The ICA used to regulate coffee prices of its members. It happened that when there was overproduction or underproduction, prices were regulated. Why is it that there was a decline after that? Every country was left to its own devices. This is where production of coffee started falling. Bad marketing habits, exploitation by the supply chain especially too many brokers. What happened after that was that coffee became non-commercial. Many people stopped farming coffee. They started opting out of coffee farming and going for, say, avocado or macadamia farming. In some places, people started uprooting coffee and building commercial houses, because coffee was no longer profitable. I am a product of coffee farming. I was taken to school through coffee farming. I grew up knowing coffee as the main economic activity in my 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."
}