IRRIGATION AGRICULTURE IN KENYA Impact of the Economic Stimulus Programme and Long-term Prospects for Food Security in an Era of Climate Change
In recent years, Kenya has experienced food shortages arising from declining farm
productivity owing to low fertility levels, high input costs and unreliable weather in
the face of a rising population. Major among these is the weather unreliability which
is experienced as an effect of Climate Change and the fact that Kenyan agriculture is
heavily dependent on rain fed systems. This has put the majority of Kenyans in status
of requiring food relief and farm input subsidies and a rising concern among public and
social institutions as public funds otherwise meant for investments programmes are
diverted to this cause. This means that variability of performance in food production
systems especially with the predicted climatic change will affect the rate investments
and therefore slowing down economic development with consequences on employment
creation in the country. On the other hand, expanding irrigation has been touted as
one of the important strategies out of this situation, because in many locations rain-fed
agriculture is no longer able to generate adequate crop yields. Falling food production
makes the Food Security situation in the country precarious and vulnerable. Climatic
change has aggravated the food security situation, since rainfall is projected to decrease
yet only a small fraction (1.8%), of the crop land is currently under irrigation (Ministry of
State for Planning and Vision 2030:Public expenditure review, 2010).
The country has an estimated irrigation potential of 1.3 million hectares, both irrigation
and drainage with about 30 %t of this possible production development with the available water resources while the rest will require water harvesting and storage to be realized. Of the 125,000 hectares currently under irrigation, Smallholders represent 43%,
public at 18% while the private large scale farms represent 39%.
Food production in the country has been declining in the recent past and that of maize
(an important component of both urban and rural household’s meals) rock-bottomed
in 2008 to about 26 million bags from 36086406 in 2006, some 16 million bags short of
the national consumption, estimated to be 42 million bags (MoA, the national study on
cost of maize production, 2010). This was occasioned by a number of factors, including
declining or no rainfall in most parts of the country, low use of improved farm inputs and
the Post Election Violence (PEV) of 2007/08. By 2009, the country faced a looming food
crisis of major proportions. Due to the strategic importance of the maize as a staple food,
the government rolled out a plan to produce maize and rice under irrigation to enhance
the national grain strategy reserves under the National Economic Stimulus Project on
food production under irrigation. The project to double up as to broadly agricultural
production systems, promote use of locally available labour & other resources in the
sector.
This undertaking succeeded to put about 40,436 acres maize (8686) and rice (31750)
slightly higher than the targeted 35,550 acres of maize (14,600) and rice (20,950) under irrigation. The two crops yielded a total of 782,662 bags, made of 147,662 bags of
maize and 635,000bags of rice. This represented 40% and 101% respectively. The area
cultivated under maize was 8686 acres and rice 31750 acres out of the targeted 14600
ix
and 20950 acres respectively. The value the achieved production was estimated as Ksh
251,025,400 from the maize grain and 1,587,500,000 from rice both estimated at 66% of
the targeted revenue of Ksh 2,798,000,000. These achievements were way off the mark
especially that of maize which realized only 40% of the target production and 28% of
expected revenue.
Rice performance was.. Read More: https://ke.boell.org/sites/default/files/irrigation_agriculture_in_kenya_-_impact_of_esp_and_food_security.pdf