Milk
The government has put in place measures to increase milk production from the current 5 billion to 11 billion litres per year by 2027. Agriculture and Livestock Development Cabinet Secretary Mithika Linturi has said there is a two-pronged approach that will see farmers being provided with sexed semen for herd growth and credit so as to produce enough nutritious feeds for dairy animals.
The CS said funds that farmers can borrow to grow fodder have been availed to the Agricultural Finance Corporation. He said through the semen subsidy program farmers will be able to acquire semen that will only yield heifers at Sh2900 per insemination, compared to the current market rate of Sh7,000 to Sh9,000.
Linturi was speaking to tea farmers at Rukuriri Tea Factory in Embu, where he said it was the government’s intention to help the farmers to diversify so as improve their incomes and shield themselves from tea market shocks. The CS assured farmers that the government will not interfere with their forthcoming elections, saying that they will work with those the farmers will elect.
He said the sector reforms started by the government five years ago had yielded better governance in the sector. Among the reforms is the removal of weighted voting where people with more tea wielded more votes than those with a few bushes.
Linturi said the shift to the in-demand orthodox teas would increase farmers’ incomes and eventually boost the crop’s contribution to the GDP of the country which currently stands at 4 per cent. Linturi revisited the fake fertilizer issue and distanced himself from the scandal.
He said the issue was clouded in lies and propaganda and that he had nothing to do with the fake product. “I do not manufacture fertilizer,” he quipped. The Kenya Tea Development Agency national Chairman Enos Njeru urged the government to remove all taxes on tea packaging materials, saying the taxes had hampered value addition in the tea sector and slowed down domestic tea sales.
Njeru said it was his board’s intention to raise tea total farmer payouts from the current Sh60 to Sh85 in the near future and eventually to more than Sh100.