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| The author poses in front of his crop in this file photograph in 2011: Photo in memory of the late Rashid Mbwana |
Good evening!
Good evening everybody!
What do you think would happen if you discover that the CEO
of Bharti Airtell uses Safaricom products? You are
right. The demand for Safaricom products will just skyrocket. Simple economics, right?
What is the essence?
From these incessant questions, I am certain many of you have missed my
presence for a couple of sessions during the last week. The number and tone of phone calls and texts that
I received during this time from the likes of Delinah tell me so.
Allow me to report that I spend the better part of last week
attending to my small farm in my Kibwezi rural home, some 195 km South of
Nairobi. Here I grow green grams, cow peas, and raise chicken and geese.
Did I just hear someone wonder what wisdom
there is in abandoning the comfort of the city for a weeklong sojourn in a dingy
village? Kindly come with me as I explain how agriculture is the surest way of ending
poverty, the rationale for my behavior last week.
Nobody doubts that the mainstream economic activity of rural
folk in Kenya is agriculture. In fact, 90% of the rural population thrives on
agriculture. I am sure that I am not the only one whose kin had to sell cattle and
fowls to fund elementary and secondary education. These statistics in Kenya do
not fall far from that in any other African country or developing country for
that matter. What then does this mean for the country’s development?
Agriculture plays a very significant role in taming poverty
in rural Kenya. To start with, agriculture is the source of food. This food not
only feeds the rural populations but also it finds its way into urban markets. Besides
providing populations with the essential nutrients, food is an important
commercial ingredient. Scores of rural and urban fold are involved in the buying
and selling of various food items such as corn, beans, cassava, coffee, tea, arrowroots,
yams, cattle, cotton, pyrethrum and millet. This is not all.
Rural folk count on agriculture as a source of employment.
When urban dwellers flock to factories in sprawling industrial estates, their
counterparts at the villages go to the farms. Please, allow me to skip the part
where the health implications, and hence the sustainability, of the different undertakings
come to play. With employment, rural populations are able to earn the
much-needed income to take care of other facets of the economy. At this point,
I know questions on the sustainability of agriculture in the wake of climate
change are rife.
Yes. Agriculture is sustainable. Forget the clamor about
climate change. Not that I am rubbishing this reality, but the manner in which
it has been over hyped. When God created man, for those who believe in the
creation story, He gave man the power to subdue the world. The world entails
the environment and the climate. In this connection, humans should not posit
that they are defeated by climate change. If anything, climate change should be
a motivation for individuals to jog their innovative memory and come up sustainable
ways of doing agriculture.
This is what Roger Thurow dissuades in his book The
Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change.
“Africa’s smallholder farmers, most of whom are women, know misery.
They toil in a time warp, living and working essentially as their forebears did
a century ago.” Something needs to be done.
Governments and corporates have a stake in the realization
of sustainable agriculture. Researchers have always spent sleepless nights
coming up with innovative ways of countering the adverse effects of climate
change. Sometimes, governments fail terribly in playing their part in
completing the equation. Inadequacy of farm inputs and lack of irrigation
infrastructure in ASALs in Kenya is a classic example of this deliberate
failure by those in establishment. This notwithstanding, the civil society has
been working hard.
To enhance the efficiency of agriculture in rural communities,
it is imperative to look into increasing productivity. Recently, Bill Gates
advocated for increased productivity in agriculture to make it meaningful. Speaking
at a Farmers Feeding the World event, he believed: “About three-quarters of the
poor who live on these farms need greater productivity, and if they get that
productivity we’ll see the benefits in income, we’ll see it in health, we’ll
see it in the percentage of their kids who are going off to school.”
Essentially, Gates connected an increase in agricultural
productivity to social economic development. When rural folk are able to sell
enough cattle and fowl to take their siblings to school, this is nothing but
development. There is one more thing that Gates did not capture in his speech: peace.
Agriculture is intimately related to peace. This is interesting. Where I come from, when a farmer “allows” his cattle to snack on the crops of his
neighbor, the most natural thing is for the cattle farmer to visit the aggrieved
farmer, admit on the development and agree to abide by the compensation the
crops farmer would deem commensurate. You see, the crops farmer must instill restraint
in the cattle farmer, lest every Tom, Dick and Harry would wipe his crop. But
the crops farmer always plays safe, fully aware that he stands equal chances of
offending any of his neighbors. The ensuing reconciliatory climate is
interesting. There is more.
Beyond the village reconciliation, agriculture discourages
political discord. Food shortages in many societies are great sources of
animosity. Not many have forgotten the heat that the infamous maize scandal has
generated in the country. You see, the point is that in most societies, the Kenyan
society being a classic example, a significant percentage of disposable income
goes to food. For precision purposes, we spend over 50% of what we earn on food.
This is serious, isn’t it?
Now we understand that it is very important to invest in agriculture.
It is the surest way of ensuring development reigns in the Kenya society. The next
time I will be disappearing to harvest on my efforts, I will let everybody know, at
least to make you envious of my significance in developing the society.
Thank you.
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