Grabbed research land has stalled a Sh318 million potato revitalisation programme that would have seen the sector become a major employer and contributor to food security.
A five-year potato sector master plan in Kenya has been turned down just before reaching the Cabinet for what the planners call flimsy reasons.
The plan, which is part of a greater government strategy to revitalise agriculture, is primarily based on producing adequate clean and high quality seeds for farmers. However, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) cannot do so because of lack of land for both research and seed multiplication.
For example, the Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC), which is mandated to multiply potato seeds, can only produce about 425 bags annually against a demand of about 40,000 bags. In the 1990s, some 19,000 acres belonging to ADC were given out to individuals.
Unable to recover the land, the government recently bought some 700 acres for ADC, but this is hardly enough for seed multiplication because the corporation requires a minimum of 3,000 acres. Because seed multiplication requires rotational farming, only about 100 acres are available for production at any given time.
