Inflation-hit Kenyan farmers want food where their mouths are

from the Gulf Times


This article show how high inflation has effected farmers in Kenya. - Kale

KAGIO, Kenya: Twenty years ago, Benson staked all his assets to venture into lucrative export crops and started growing the French beans so prized by European consumers.

But with rampant inflation pushing up his costs and a slumping market for French beans, the ageing Kenyan farmer decided to revert to subsistence crops and “plant for his stomach”.

“When prices were good, I was able to build a house, I got a wife and I was able to raise my family,” says Benson Murimi Munga.

“Then, the buyers started dropping prices... I was facing losses in terms of what I had invested in the farm in buying fertilizers, pesticides, seeds and labour, I could not recover.”

Now the 49-year-old has stopped growing French beans and his modest plot in Kagio, a village nestled in the heart of Kenya’s central breadbasket, is planted with rice, bananas and maize.

French beans are Kenya’s top vegetable export but are not consumed locally and a growing number of farmers are opting for crops that will at least feed the family when times get hard.

French beans, seasonal in Europe, were introduced in Kenya and championed as a miracle crop for local farmers since the richer soil and climate here allow for all-year harvests.

“In those days, French beans would give you a good pay, people were planting French beans all over,” says Peter Mwangi, a buyer in the Kagio region who remembers how the farmers’ standard of living improved at the time.

“But the prices are preventing us from farming French beans, they are getting lower and lower. Farmers are running into debt,” he explains.

“Prices were bad the whole of last year, 60% of our production was not bought and we fed the cows with it.”

Kenya’s flagship vegetable export crop has recently suffered from a campaign by European green activists critical of the carbon footprint generated by air freighting goods that are also grown locally.

Kenya’s farmers have also felt the squeeze of increasing competition from countries such as Morocco, Egypt and Senegal and suffered from the soaring cost of chemicals and fertilizers.

“It has become more and more of a challenge to address all this: the fuel prices, the cost of inputs has gone up... and at the same time there is a lot of competition from other countries,” says Shamit Shah, founder and director of Sunripe, one of Kenya’s largest French beans exporters.

Kenya was badly hit by the global food crisis and skyrocketing inflation, heightening fears of food shortages following the disruption to farming caused by the violence that swept the country after the disputed December elections.

“Kenya strayed from sustainable farming and followed the temptation of exporting, when it’s clearly preferable to produce and consume locally,” says Claude-Marie Vadrot, an ecology expert with French weekly Politis.

“With subsistence farming, there’s more or less always a market for your products, but when French or European retailers no longer want beans, then Kenya will be left with nothing,” he explains.

“Kenya can try to cash in on exports to neighbouring countries, but exports to Europe are a lost cause due to the soaring cost of transport, the issue of carbon emissions. Farmers should not waste time in shifting the focus back to indigenous crops,” he says.

But Vadrot’s view is not shared by all in Kenya.

“Encouraging subsistence farming is another way of taking Kenyan farmers out of the international market chain and confining them to poverty,” retorts Stephen Mbithi, the chief executive of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya.

“African countries will not become food secure by having enough food in their granary, but by having enough disposable income in their pockets to buy the food they need,” he argues.

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