DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN-KENYA: Kenya Looks Forward to Bumper Maize Crop

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jun 6 1998 (IPS) - Kenya has been recovering from the effects of El Nino including a poor 1997 maize crop and is expecting a bumper harvest of the staple this year.

“The current long rains, which were earlier predicted to be poor, have on the contrary been well distributed throughout the country and maize planted on over one million hectares is so far doing well,” said the Minister for Agriculture, Livestock Development and Marketing Musalia Mudavadi, in a statement made available on Monday to IPS.

Maize is Kenya’s main staple. Last season, the government recorded a deficit of seven million 90-kg bags, and urged the private sector to import the commodity to bridge the gap.

“The national maize consumption was in the region of 33 million bags while the total production stood at 26 million bags which left a shortfall of seven million bags to be imported at the time,” said Mudavadi.

But the government, desperate to protect farmers, issued an order on May 28 suspending the importation of maize into the East African country.

“… making additional import committments, … could lead to major losses in view of the latest development regarding maize availability in the country,” said the minister. “The country now has adequate stock to feed the nation up to the next harvest.

“Since the next harvest is expected to start in July/August, we would like to avoid a situation where imports interfere with the marketing of the local maize crop.”

Last year’s production was hampered by drought in the early months of the planting season, followed by unusually heavy rains blamed on El Nino, the warm ocean current that disrupts weather patterns in various parts of the world.

Farmers also complain that they do not have enough silos for storing maize.

In a recent workshop here, Irungu Houghton of the British charity ACTIONAID called for food security to be included in Kenya’s constitution.

If the state guarantees basic needs as a basic right, he said, that will ensure not only that the interests of the poor come out on top of the national agenda, but also that they become enforceable.

Statistics shows that between 1994 and 1997, the number of Kenyans living below the poverty line rose from 11 million to over 12.6 million — 42 percent of Kenya’s 30 million people.

Last year’s poor harvest affected the country’s economy as a whole, according to Kenya’s 1998 Economic Survey, released on May 22 by Minister for Planning and National Development George Saitoti. It slowed the growth of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) to a mere 2.3 percent in 1997, from 4.6 percent in 1996, the survey showed.

This year’s target is five percent.

Despite the availability of food, many Kenyans still go hungry. For example, the Minister of Education, Kalonzo Musyoka, Monday appealed for emergency food for 100,000 peasants in Mwingi in the country’s Eastern Province.

“These people are in dire need of famine relief support,” he was quoted as saying by the ‘Kenya Times’ daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU).

Musyoka added that many households were forced to forego meals, while others had become internal refugees due to the famine, blamed on the destruction of crops by swarms of grasshoppers that invaded the region last season.