By Fiona Imbali

Effects of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – endorsed Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) are still being felt in Kenya three decades later. The agricultural sector still faces a myriad of challenges as the government has failed to put in place comprehensive agricultural policies to cushion farmers against unfair international markets while the country still grapples with insufficient food reserves at the national strategic grain reserve.

Policies on international trade are still skewed towards the Western safe same countries where large multinationals thrive as their countries largely subsidize farm inputs for farmers. Industrialised nations benefitted from SAPS at the expense of primary producers in Kenya and other African countries as poor farmers continue to be subjected to whims of international markets and consequently a decline in their incomes.

Extension service provision in the country is in a poor state due to low budget allocations which means that farmers get poor agricultural information and consequently below par practices and harvest. These salient issues ignored by the National and County governments exacerbate food insecurity in the country. Ms. Margaret Mbugua, the in-charge of Research of extension in Machakos County notes that currently one extension officer supports 1500 farmers in one ward while the ideal number would be one extension officer in every-sub-location. Furthermore budgets for extension services have been reduced to 4% which is less than 2% of the national budget while top-down policies employed by the government have led to less funding for research. Moreover, critical information on research carried out continue to gather dust in government offices at the expense of farmers and this is also largely due to dwindling numbers of government extension workers.

Structure of extension service provision has changed since the devolved government came into place and thus the national government supports extension services only through implementation of various projects and policies whilst major responsibilities are however, left to the Counties. Extension officers are charged with policy-making in the counties. While most County’s policies on agriculture are still in the formulation stage, Machakos County has vision 2017 in place. Extension officers should ideally enlighten farmers on issues such as emerging enterprises and markets; agro-processing and value-addition; value-chain management; relay researchable information and farmers’ challenges to responsible officials and research institutions as well as network farmers with other stakeholders in the field.  They are also responsible for regulating and ensuring quality inspection of inputs by collaborating with regulatory agencies to cushion farmers from being duped but this rarely happens.

During OAICs farmer’s resource person’s workshop at JJ McCarthy centre, the participants quipped that extension officer’s lack capacity to support farmers and are largely seen as having mostly outdated information. They were blamed for not being equipped with the latest information on market trends and other services despite an increase in demand for agricultural information. Nevertheless, there has been an emergence of private extension providers who try to fill in the gap of government officials. They have however, been accused of providing conflicting information that has seen instances where farmers implemented wrong agricultural practices that consequently led to poor yields.

Farmers have also hurriedly adopted new crops before doing market research which has led to huge losses. Ms. Wambugu notes that National Agricultural Sectoral Programme and various other stakeholders in the private sector and NGOs continue to play a critical role in providing critical information to farmers. She urges Chiefs to organize for baraza’s while churches should also take it upon themselves to help with organizing farmers and sharing important agricultural information. She further urges farmers to counter-check seeds brought by the private enterprises to guard against fakes.

John Amisi, a farmer from Vihiga County notes that extension service provision challenges could be resolved when farmers organise themselves into groups as seen in the health sector which has used community health workers to revolutionize service provision. He encourages farmer-to-farmer extension groups in the community as this would ensure that farmers are trained on best agricultural practices and this is relayed to other farmers during organized fora. Such groups would also ensure that the available extension provider is able to reach greater numbers of farmers as opposed to individualized services.

Ms. Wambugu notes that the government needs to work with other ministries and development organizations to enhance the sharing of agricultural information whilst communities should also take initiative to organize themselves into groups to strengthen participatory – integrated programmes. She alludes to the fact that policy makers as well as Cabinet Secretaries are ignorant of happenings on the ground and this she largely blames on lack of communication. Use of local media to circulate agricultural messages to farmers in local languages; farmers engaging actively in value-chain platforms as well as reporting of suspect seeds or inputs and services for inspection by agricultural officers and other authorities are ways that could be employed to enhance sharing of agricultural information. Ms. Wambugu further notes that it’s time for farmers to be empowered to ensure their full participation in policy formulation and development.