In the recent past there have been cries of a looming famine across the country. Food shortage in Kenya isn’t something new because over the years thousands of Kenyans have lost their lives due to hunger. Millions others don’t get enough food with children suffering malnutrition. It is a sad situation for Kenya.
Don’t get it twisted, Kenya has the capacity to feed her people sufficiently, only that the authorities are not interested. There is no regime that has ever made an attempt to exploit Kenya’s potential in Agriculture for food security in its entirety. The talk on food security has been shallow and cosmetic. There has never been a sustained initiative on agrarian reforms.
Take for instance the food security bill that has been introduced in the senate by the leader of Majority, it is a bill that is full of grandiose but essentially empty. It creates dubious authorities that are meant to distribute food but pays little attention on how to produce food. Policy makers in this country have an illusion that creation of authorities and some posh positions will one day solve the problems that face us every day.
The Bill doesn’t tell us how we can improve on our land use policy by taking advantage of the available arable land and reclaiming more land for our food sustainability. Land use in Kenya has been without plan. Take for instance, the quick disappearance of arable land in Kiambu County where real estate business is flourishing to the detriment of agriculture. In future, Kiambu which is in the fertile Mt. Kenya may depend from other counties to feed herself. It is incumbent for the government to develop a futuristic policy on how land ought to be used in Kenya.
The Food Security Bill takes an easy route of setting systems on how food should be distributed. Even then, its distribution policy is mediocre. Mediocre because it doesn’t propose silos for the tons and tons of food that rot in farms because it cannot be stored or reach the market in good time. It isn’t strange to hear that farmers in Kisii or Nyandarua are throwing food away while Kenyans in Baringo, Tana River and Marsabit are dying of hunger.
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