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{
    "id": 978968,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/978968/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 174,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mwea, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Josphat Kabinga",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13441,
        "legal_name": "Josphat Kabinga Wachira",
        "slug": "josphat-kabinga-wachira-2"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker for giving me a chance to contribute to this Bill. In my county, tea is grown in the upper part near the mountains. We grow rice and we have observed that tea farmers face similar challenges to ours. We look forward to the success of this Bill which I highly support. This is because, very soon, we hope to have a Rice Board coming to this House. As we look forward to the formation of the Tea Board, we urge that it lives to the tasks ahead and especially on coordination. Looking at the tea industry right from the farms, there are many challenges which need to be looked into. We hope the Board will be the only player in the market that will be charged with the responsibility of coordination. This is a good opportunity because we are now coming up with a specialised and focused institution which will look into the challenges that farmers are facing. The tea industry has been characterised by a lot of malpractices where some players are gaining and over-exploiting farmers. It is for that reason that we highly support this Bill. We hope that that board will look at this industry as a whole; starting from the farmer himself and look at the challenges that he is facing. In particular, I want to bring out one area that has been forgotten many a time when we discuss farming, whether it is rice, tea, coffee and others - that is the strengthening of our research institutions. Over time, we find our farmers recycling their products because of lack of strong institutions for research. This is one area that I would urge this board that is coming up not to forget like others have done in the past. We need to continually look at the research area so that the tea varieties that we are growing may be reviewed from time to time, more so, looking at our climate changes. We are dealing with this industry as if we are living in constant climatic conditions in this country and yet, we acknowledge that climate change takes place. But our farmers do not have the liberty of going for new types of coffee seedlings."
}