Government prepares food security strategy

The Kenyan government, in collaboration with aid donors, plans to improve agricultural production as a strategy to strengthen food security and minimise shortages, President Mwai Kibaki said on Tuesday. The implementation of the programme would entail making quality seeds available to farmers, maintaining soil fertility, improving small-scall water management projects and strengthening farmers' advisory services. Research in agriculture would also be enhanced and areas under irrigation expanded. The whole plan would cost nearly US $73 million, Kibaki said. "We should focus on what each one of us can do to improve agriculture," Kibaki said in an address to a conference on the revitalisation of the country's agricultural sector. "The government will continue to assist, but it is the farmer who must do the actual production." Kibaki said the programme would be implemented in the "medium term" and was intended to reduce food shortages among vulnerable members of the society. He said the government had already set aside 80 million shillings ($1.04 million) for the implementation of the scheme. Arable land is scarce in Kenya, the president said, but farmers could overcome the problem through the use of technological innovations to achieve higher yields. The president said the agricultural sector contributed about 30 percent of Kenya's gross domestic product and a further 27 percent through linkages with other sectors. Farming accounted for 80 percent of national employment, 60 percent of the total export earnings, while 45 percent of government revenue came from agriculture. "The agricultural sector has the greatest impact on overall economic performance," said Kibaki in the capital, Nairobi. "As you deliberate on the revitalisation of the agriculture, it is important that you pay attention to the issue of food security in the country." The government, he added, had also launched an economic recovery programme for the arid and semi-arid areas of the north and the northeast, where livestock production accounted for about 90 percent of employment and family incomes. The plan for arid and semi-arid regions focuses on increasing pastoral livestock production through provision of water, establishment of livestock disease-free zones, improved breeding services and the promotion of an efficient private-sector-led marketing system. Last year, the government and relief agencies appealed for food aid for an estimated 2.3 million people in 26 Kenyan districts after erratic rainfall and a prolonged drought in some areas led to poor harvests.