Kwale County government has started distributing farm inputs to smallholder farmers across the coastal county following the start of the rainy season.
The county government has been at the forefront of reviving commercial agricultural practice in the area by providing farm inputs such as certified high-yielding seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, mechanization, and technical training to local farmers.
Farmers have received high-yielding seeds for crops like rice, cowpeas, green grams, mango, and cashew nut tree seedlings to enhance yields as the county experiences heavy rains.
In the recent past, the county government of Kwale has distributed hundreds of tons of improved and certified seeds, fertilizer, bulls, dairy cattle, and Galla goats to farmers to improve local stock.
Tractors sponsored by the county administration have been ploughing fields to improve the acreage under crops as well as agricultural education to farmers to improve livestock husbandry and crop farming.
Governor Fatuma Achani who inaugurated the event in Msambweni Sub County says the move would ensure sustainable food and nutrition security, job creation, and revenue generation to grow the local economy.
Governor Achani accompanied by the County Executive Committee Member for Agriculture Roman Shera noted that limited access to certified seeds was a major barrier to agricultural productivity in the region.
She said the devolved unit through the agricultural department would ensure that the certified seeds were made available to farmers countywide to boost rain-season farming.
The coastal county boss says the devolved government has taken the initiative to provide local farmers with high-quality seeds that are suitable for the region’s climatic and soil conditions.
She urged the farmers to focus their energies on agribusiness which she said will change their livelihoods and the face of Kwale.
“That is why we are committed to change this by providing our farmers with certified seeds,” she said.
“We believe that access to high-quality seeds is essential for improving agricultural productivity and ensuring food security in our county,” she added.
Achani says the seed distribution was part of the mitigation measures against the current flood disaster that had wreaked havoc on farmlands.
She tasked the beneficiaries to make prudent use of the agricultural inputs to produce more food for the county and country.
Achani says the county government has launched a sensitization campaign to encourage the farmers to store surplus food for future use, especially in lean times instead of selling the produce at cheap prices.
”We have realized that farmers sell surplus produce and we are now encouraging them using our agricultural officers to store some of the food in cases of famine and drought,’’ Governor Achani noted.
Mr. Roman Shera says the county had also supported local farmers with tractors to prepare their land and farm inputs to improve output.
The Agriculture Executive urged the beneficiaries to utilize the gesture for the purpose it was meant to complement the devolved governments’ agricultural drive of the county.
He explained that the purpose of the programme was to help local farmers to boost their farm production in the area.
“We are also reengineering the agricultural sector by stationing agricultural officers in each sub-county to train farmers on commercial farming and to embrace modern ways of farming,” he said.
By Hussein Abdullahi
