Almost every working Kenyan has a ‘side hustle’. Mine, like for many other Kenyans’, is in small-scale farming — which I do on a 10-acre piece of land.
This is not just for making ends meet. There are certain intrinsic and almost sentimental benefits I get from farming which cannot be quantified monetarily. My love for nature and the overbearing spirit of communing with the wild and my study of birds and animals to understand the true spirit of life gives me the motivation.
But I am also driven by the desire to make my contribution to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s ‘Big Four Agenda’ item of food security.
In essence, I have joined the more than 70 per cent of my compatriots in the rural areas who try to earn a living out of farming. Yet Kenya remains a food-deficient nation.
Farming comes with many challenges. I hardly meet a farmer who is happy with the earnings from their toil and sweat. They nostalgically look back on the 1970s and ’80s, when agricultural extension officers would provide free support to them.
They tell of when artificial insemination (AI) services were provided by government for free. They talk of the time they were guaranteed of markets for their grains at a reasonable price.
The importation of cheap grain from countries where farmers are subsidised dominates discourses on how politicians and technocrats have conspired to pauperise them.
Kenya has not met the 10 per cent target of the total government spending on agriculture as agreed on at the African Union meeting in Maputo in 2003. Only a small fraction of the expenditure on agriculture is devoted to supportive spending on rural education, extension services and infrastructure.
Our policies hardly reflect the desire to promote agriculture — a good example being the proposed regulations on the agricultural sector that took farmers by surprise recently.
The plight of maize farmers exemplifies the desolation. To produce a 90kg bag of maize costs Sh2,150 yet the government buys it at Sh2,300.
Youngsters do not want to study and venture into agriculture. In our universities, agriculture courses are undersubscribed. With talk of scrapping unattractive courses, agriculture could be the first to go. Indeed, some universities are contemplating closing down departments of agriculture.
Ironically, Kenya is an agricultural nation. Yet young people despise farming, and for good reasons: They have seen their parents impoverished by it and there are very few success stories and hardly any mentors.
The African Development Bank (AfDB), in its 2016-2025 strategy for agriculture, advises African governments to empower small-scale farmers to “sustainably and profitably produce more food and achieve a food-secure continent”, through access to improved soil, fertilisers, credit and markets.
Provide resources to value addition outlets; empower the youth with knowledge and skills; and, more importantly, develop policies and strategies to address the needs of small-scale farmers and enable them to benefit from research findings.
Food security requires a ‘Marshall Plan’ aimed at making this nation food-secure and my side hustle profitable.
Prof Kabaji is a professor of literary communication at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST). [email protected]
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