The government has committed to fully implement the Land Commercialisation Initiative which will put huge tracts of idle land into agricultural use as it seeks to increase food production and bridge the food deficit in the country.

State Department for Crops Development Principal Secretary, Kello Harsama said that the government has large parcels of land under parastatals and other government organisations which are lying idle and can be cultivated to produce food for the country.

Speaking on Tuesday during the inaugural investors’ conference on the Land Commercialisation Initiative (LCI), the PS said that the motivation for the government to cultivate the idle land is because of the severe effects of the recent drought, which almost brought about a food crisis in the country.

“Recently we experienced the biggest food deficit the country has ever seen with a shortfall of over 10 million bags of maize,” said Harsama, adding that in the past in such instances the government imported food from the region, but this time around even the neighbouring countries did not have food to export.

According to Harsama, those who were given the certificates to import duty-free maize could not get it from the region, with some being forced to import from as far away as Brazil and Vietnam, with the closest being South Africa, where Kenya faced competition from other countries like South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, and Angola.

The PS said that to remedy the food shortage in the country, the government has prioritised the utilisation of idle land by leasing it to local and international investors to produce food for the country and export it.

“The president has declared that for us to maximally utilise our land resources we are going to establish over 100 mega dams across the country to facilitate irrigation agriculture,” said Harsama.

Food demand

The PS said that approximately 2.5 million acres of arable land held by public institutions remain unused, and to meet the country’s food demand, the strategy is to bring 500,000 acres of new land into production.

“The country has a deficit of 7.8 million bags of maize against a projected demand of 67 million bags of maize as of 2022,” said Harsama.

He explained that for the initial phase of the project, some of the parcels of land that the government has prioritised include Galana Kulalu, the Bura irrigation scheme, Egerton University, Kimabere Farm, Kirimum Field Unit, Masinga Farm, the Tana Delta irrigation project, and the Tana irrigation scheme.