Who Ate The Maize?

Let's find out

Maize, the staple crop, contributes heavily to food security in Kenya.  Maize farming risks being lost forever.  Despite heavy budget on subsidizing the crop, the crop faces numerous challenges ranging from high cost of production making the crop uncompetitive, bad weather, degraded soils and corruption on the marketing of the output.

The recent scandal in the maize sector got me thinking why the government would continue heavily supporting the crop yet the subsector is marred with a lot of inefficiencies and corruption. The heavy budget that goes to maize subsidy pegs the question of sustainability of the subsisdy program. Will socialism theory in the agriculture sector deliver the good results? should we allow capitalism- free market economic system?

Eastern Uganda lands are endowed with very fertile soils where they use open pollinated seeds variety without fertilizers while back here in Kenya hybrid seeds and fertilizers must be used due to degraded soils.  With the porous borders and the sweet deal given to maize farmers by NCPB, brokers will always import maize from Uganda then sell it to NCBP.

Compared to the maize that enters Kenya through porous borders from Uganda, maize farming in Kenya is becoming a pain to the farmers.  To produce a bag of maize in Kenya costs KShs 2500 and middlemen can buy maize from Uganda for as low as KShs. 1800.

 The middlemen ate our maize and until that time we put the middlemen in their rightful place, our food security is at jeopardy. But how do we do it?

Reducing the cost of production will help both the consumers and farmers to enjoy their share of the cake.  Farmers should be trained on how to use right amount and type of fertilizer that suits their soil types so as to reduce the amount of fertilizer use.  The budget allocation to fertilizer subsidy should be used to employ other long term strategy like irrigation.  Politics revolving the crop need to be rejected like plague to enhance food security in the country.