The missing link in soaring food prices

Talk on the high cost of living has been going on for some time now in various spaces, but most notably on social media, where all sorts of jokes have been invented and circulated for amusement that masks critical commentary on the sad turn of events.

The steady rise in the cost of petrol, transport, ever-increasing school fees, and others have been pointers to a calamity waiting to happen.

This seems to be unfolding now, with the cost of basic commodities such as unga and milk reaching unprecedented levels.

INCOME OPPORTUNITIES

Not only is this so, the same commodities have become scarce and cannot always be found on the shelves.

Why do we find ourselves in this mess?

Many reasons have been advanced to explain our shared predicament; from natural causes like drought and flash floods, leadership ineptitude, market interference through hoarding, to unnecessary post-harvest wastage.

While these offer some explanation, I think the overall picture can become clearer if we pay attention to changing labour practices and income opportunities that have led to fewer people being available to till the land.

LABOUR

Among other examples, the rise of the boda boda phenomenon in the rural and peri-urban areas has meant that there are more able-bodied men and a few women who spend most of their time on motorcycles in the guise of doing transport business, when they could actually be on the farms producing food.

These young people naturally exert pressure on the little food that is produced because they expect it to be enough to go around, when the reality is the opposite.

Worse, some young men have sold their inherited land to buy motorcycles.

This is a recipe for chaos in the food sector.

So, unless the unregulated boda boda business is looked at again, the problems of spiking food prices will persist. How do we get out of this?

AGRICULTURE
We need to restore faith in subsistence farming as a way of easing pressure on national food requirements, and this can be done mainly by persuading youth to leave their motorcycles and head to the farms for real production.

Long term agricultural reforms, including mechanisation of small and medium-scale agricultural production, provision of support networks in access to farm inputs and markets.

SELF-SUSTENANCE

Like individual families that keep vegetable gardens, schools can be encouraged to produce part of what they consume.

Schools should be required to engage in dairy and food crop farming, either on owned or leased land, as a few do this as a parents/teachers’ association initiative.

If schools can produce up to 60 per cent of the food they need, through green house technology or rain-fed farming, they will not only be more insulated against food price shocks, but will also teach students that it is possible to produce what you consume, and consume what you produce.

Further, schools should revisit the old tradition of 4K Clubs, where learners were taught basic lessons in tilling and farming; this will socialise them into the understanding that anyone and everyone has a responsibility and ability to contribute towards food production.

INVEST IN SECTOR

The independence rallying call of ‘Turudi mashambani tufanye kazi’ should be revived to mobilise youth to go back to farms.

There is as much fulfilment in realising increased farm produce as there is in riding motorcycle taxis for a living.

All these should be way easier now as county governments can invest more resources to stabilise the supply of agricultural products.

In a country where over 30 per cent of food is wasted post-harvest, can’t county governments build better and secure grain banks in each village or clusters of villages to solve this problem?

Ms Olembo is a public health consultant. [email protected]