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Farmers across the country have purchased more than three million bags of fertiliser under the Fertiliser Subsidy Programme (FSP), the government announced on Tuesday, June 13, 2023.

In a statement, State House Spokesperson Hussein Mohamed said some 1.72 million bags of planting fertiliser have been purchased by farmers from 40 counties.

Uasin Gishu takes the lead in the number of bags redeemed under the government’s subsidy program with 402,366 bags followed by Trans Nzoia at 240,097 and Nakuru at 213, 242 bags.

Mohamed also affirmed that President William Ruto is committed to increasing access to farm inputs to boost production in the country.

“President William Ruto remains committed to delivering increased food production in the country by subsidising production, not consumption,” he said.

The Head of State is banking on local production to deal with the high cost of living in the country.

Immediately after his inauguration last year, the President vowed to invest in producers, terming subsidies on consumption as unsustainable.

Cheaper fertiliser

The government’s initial release of Ksh3.5 billion funding saw the prices of fertiliser drop to Ksh3,500 from Ksh6,500.

“We are not going to be subsidizing consumption. That is why we are going slow on the matter of subsidizing consumption. We are going to work and support producers,” Ruto said while addressing a Kenya Kwanza parliamentary group meeting in Naivasha in September last year.

“The Unga subsidy that was done, I was being briefed by the Ministry of Agriculture for one month, the taxpayer was asked to pay Ksh7 billion for the unga that cost Ksh100 which was nowhere in the first place. Only few people laid hold of it. If we had spent Ksh7 billion shillings in fertilizer it would have been a different ball game.”