The Principal Secretary (PS) State Department for Crop Development, Dr. Paul Rono has visited the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) Eldoret to inspect its readiness to receive maize for drying and storage for this harvest season and fertilizers for next planting season

Speaking at NCPB Eldoret the Ps requested farmers who still have maize from the last season to sell it to cereals noting that they have asked the cereals to sell the maize that is in the stores so as to get more space to purchase the next batch.

He said the Ministry has started to give out the tenders so that suppliers can apply and the evaluation will be going on soon to identify which suppliers will supply quality fertilizers and seeds so that they can be available for farmers to purchase them early.

He revealed that the government has arranged that from November fertilizers and seeds for the next planting season will be received in every store across the country.

‘In this short rainy season farmers in Uasin Gishu have been able
to take almost 100,000 fertilizers and that is a good progress as we depend on Uasin Gishu for maize,’ said Rono.

He added: ‘The government has bought a lot of maize from Uasin Gishu, almost 700,000 bags and we have paid the farmers Sh1.5 billion and there is still remaining money that we are still going to use to buy more before the end of the year,’ he noted.

‘I want to thank farmers in Kenya as for now we have received 70 million of 90kg bags which is the highest ever and we are likely to get more going forward in this harvest season and this will help the government to sort out the issue of hunger,’ he added.

‘We have started distributing sunflower to 41 counties and we will be distributing 20,000 kilos of sunflower seeds to Uasin Gishu and the identified farmers should come and collect the seeds to plant after they harvest their maize,’ he said.

‘We have also distributed driers to assist farmers in terms of post-harvest losses we noticed that this country lost close to 30 percent of our produce as a
result of post-harvest related challenges and the government has distributed 100 driers to all our key depots, ‘he said.

He revealed that 20 dryers have been distributed to assist farmers to dry up cereals in the region.

‘We want to make sure going forward we put both fertilizers and seeds in one stop shop to enhance efficiency of government distribution of farm input,’ said Rono.

‘We will still distribute fertilizers at the cost of Sh2500 per 50kg bags as pronounced by the government and I want to encourage farmers going forward that they prepare their farms as the government will do what it entails to ensure there is market for their produce at the same time we will facilitate them also in terms of production and harvest,’ noted the PS.

Source: Kenya News Agency