OPINION: Bad Ndengu Law: We need to rethink our approach to agriculture policy

Kenya's agri-food policy landscape is experiencing unprecedented turbulence.

The recent rejection of the 2024 Finance Bill and widespread civic education initiatives across the country have shed light on a series of legislative proposals that threaten to infringe on various sectors of our society.

Smallholder farmers, who form 70 percent of the country’s agricultural sector, have increasingly become the targets of potentially harmful policies.

At the centre of the most current policy storm is the 2022 Mung Bean Bill, which poses significant risks to Kenya's diverse agricultural landscape and the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers.

But this contentious Bill is only the latest in a worrying raft of legislations that have left Kenyans wondering whether their members of parliament have their best interests at heart.

Let’s take a closer look at the Seed and Plant Varieties Act, for example, which reveals serious threats to Kenya’s food security and sovereignty.

This Act prohibits the selling, exchanging, and sharing of uncertified seeds and seeks to penalize offenders with a maximum two-year prison sentence, a fine of Ksh.1 million, or both.

According to a 2018 report on Identifying Leading Seed Companies in Eastern and Southern Africa, farmers in Kenya and the region access around 90 per cent of their seed from informal or farmer-managed systems.

These farmer-managed systems are crucial for preserving agro-biodiversity, ensuring food security, maintaining genetic diversity, and building resilience against climate and economic shocks.

They are the reason that ndengu farmers, for instance, can keep producing the crop because they use recycled seeds to bridge shortages.

By pushing a punishing seed law while there’s a critically low supply and access to certified seeds, the government jeopardises smallholder farmers’ ability to produce food which could severely compromise our country’s food security

The Mung Beans Bill 2022 also requires growers to register and for marketers, processors, and large-scale traders to obtain licenses, which creates bureaucratic hurdles, in an already corruption-riddled system.

These hurdles are easier for well-resourced entities to navigate. Small farmers, who often lack access to information and resources, will struggle to comply with these new regulations.

The establishment of county licensing committees unfurls another layer of bureaucracy that could be prone to corruption or favouritism, potentially marginalizing small farmers in decision-making processes. The appeal process may be too complex and time-consuming for smallholders to effectively utilize.

While the Bill mentions providing technical assistance and capacity building to county governments, it fails to adequately address the specific needs of small-scale farmers. There's no clear provision for extension services, access to affordable inputs, or support for small-scale processing and marketing initiatives that could benefit farmers

While licensing aims to allow all actors in the value chain to operate within a regulated framework, it might be viewed as a barrier to entry into the value chain especially by the youth who are just starting out.

If the cost of licensing is set too high, as the bill does not mention the cost of obtaining the licenses, this may deter young people from pursuing and only leave room for a few select entrepreneurs which could potentially lead to monopolization.

To address these challenges effectively, we must radically rethink our approach to agricultural policy-making.

Firstly, we must include the input of those directly affected by policies. Farmers and diverse food system actors across various value chains must be given seats at the policy table. Beyond ‘known’ and traditional policymakers the input of a wide spectrum of stakeholders- from small-scale producers to processors, distributors, and even consumers - is crucial for crafting holistic and sustainable agricultural policies.

A key aspect of effective policy-making is contextualization. While we can learn from the success of other countries, we must recognize that context matters significantly.

Policies aligned with Kenya’s context should concentrate more on local solutions which could focus on expanding smallholders' access to insurance and financing, building robust market links, boosting climate-smart techniques, and building and strengthening farmer cooperatives.

Our country’s agriculture industry has a lot of potential, but our approach to formulating policies must fundamentally change if we are to prosper.

Formalisation of the agricultural sector is a good move, but it must be made possible by enabling infrastructure that increases accessibility and inclusivity, rather than punishes the most marginalized actors in the sector. Otherwise, our lawmakers will be failing their most basic duty- which is to represent the best interests of their constituents; we, the people of Kenya.

The writers are African Food Fellows