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Kenyans starve as food worth millions of shillings rots
As women celebrated International Women’s Day on Monday, Mrs Veronica Wairimu Njogu of Tumaini in Nyandarua was harvesting her green maize. She has plenty of food at the farm but cannot take the produce to the market due to poor roads. Photo/JOSEPH KIHERI
Posted Tuesday, March 9 2010 at 19:54
Food worth millions of shillings is rotting on farms across the country due to lack of markets and impassable roads.
From Marakwet in the North Rift to Mathira in Central and Hola at the Coast, it is the same story of anger and disappointment at wasted labour.
The irony is that all this food is going to waste in a country where some citizens are starving.
Nowhere is the situation as dire as the Hola Irrigation Scheme in Tana River District.
Farmers at the scheme, celebrating a bumper harvest for the first time in 20 years, are a bitterly disappointed lot.
Failed to buy
More than 200 tonnes of maize from the scheme revived last year by President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga are rotting after the National Cereals and Produce Board failed to buy the crop.
The scheme was revived under the National Economic Stimulus Programme late last year.
Farmers said they could not believe this was the same government that was frustrating them, just three months after encouraging them to produce the maize.
“What are we supposed to do? How can the government do this to us? How can it let us invest so much only to leave our crops to rot?” demands Mr Said Mugawa of Hola Farmers Cooperative Society.
Mr Mugawa said all efforts to sell the maize to the NCPB had failed. Delegations sent to the Ministry of Agriculture in Nairobi to beg it to buy the maize have also been in vain.
Allocated money
“We are constantly told the government has not allocated the money to buy our maize,” he said.
The farmers had put 850 acres out 1,240 under maize.
“Our stores, which can accommodate only 3,000 bags are full. A lot of maize is still on the farm, rotting and has been there for more than a month,” Mr Mugawa said.
Ms Fatuma Galgalo, the chairperson of the Hola Farmers Advisory Committee, said the maize was at risk of contamination by aflatoxin.
“Although the crop was tested and approved for human consumption, we fear that with continued exposure to moisture and other conditions, it could soon be contaminated,” she said.
“Our children are at home as we are unable to pay school fees. We are so worried as life has ground to a halt at the scheme,” said Mr Mugawa.
RSS