CAN THIS COUNTRY THROW AWAY MILK AND CABBAGES SO SOON AFTER THE LAST FAMINE?

By Jerry Okungu
February 10, 2010

The stories I have been getting from Kinangop, many parts of Rift Valley and even in Ukambani are not fiction. They are real. Milk is going to waste in most parts of Rift Valley because Kenya Corporate Creameries cannot cope with glut. Cabbages in Kinangop are either being thrown away or are given to the cows as cattle feed because farmers have no market for their surpluses. The supplies of these two commodities have gone beyond current demand.

In many parts of Ukambani especially in Mwingi, Kitui and a number of perennially arid parts of that region, people are celebrating. They are in a jovial mood because for the first time in many decades, they will not experience the humiliation of always begging for food from donors and well wishers. They have had a bumper harvest this time round.

These sad stories of seeing milk and cabbages going to waste have reminded me of my childhood.

As a little boy growing in the village of Awasi, I was blessed to have a hard working mother who took farming as the most important occupation of her life. Supported by her equally energetic husband who tilled the land with his ox-driven plough, my mother made it a point to have a bumper harvest every harvesting season. And the beauty with her farming habits was that she loved to plant a variety of crops. She planted maize, millet, simsim, sorgum, sweet potatoes, cassava, cabbages, peas, beans and groundnuts.

But perhaps her skills were more illustrated in her ability to preserve and store her surpluses of the more perishable goods for future dry seasons. Crops like maize, millet, sorghum and simsim and even groundnuts were easier to dry and store. However, when it came to vegetables of all kinds, sweet potatoes and cassava, she would specially dry them up in the sun for days before putting them in sacks or special pots for storage to be used during seasons of scarcity.

I thought about her a few years ago when I met one Ugandan professor on a speech day at the United States International University. At that function, the good professor decried the folly of neglecting our regional infrastructure, the only reason many parts of Kenya were suffering from hunger and starvation as Ugandans threw to waste 300,000 tons of bananas every year for lack of markets and inability to consume their domestic production.

This time, I remember my mother because we are again facing wastage of our farm produce just after a few months when this country went begging rich nations to feed our starving populations.

I remember her because despite her scanty knowledge of food preservation, she was able to do many years ago what our National Disaster Management Secretariat, our Freedom from Hunger institutions and our very learned personnel in the Ministry of Agriculture and other institutions of higher learning have failed to do, let alone emulate her skills.

Every other year, this region goes through the motions of failed rains, dry seasons, hunger and deaths of animals and their owners. In almost every case, such dry spells are followed by massive rains and floods that cause us more misery and loss of more lives. And we go through this experience year in year out as if it was ordained from our ancestors. The people of Budalangi, Kano Plains, Nyakach, parts of the Coast and Kitui now know that during every rainy season, they must expect more suffering.

Surely, we can go back to the drawing board to see what our ancestors used to do in order to harvest rain water. In their crude way, every village had a man-made dam into which rain waters were directed before they flowed to the local rivers. That way, villagers and their livestock had water that lasted them throughout the dry spells. With a bit of more scientific innovations, we can improve on these ancient skills that worked for our forefathers.

In this day and age, it is criminal for our policy planners, technical experts and governors to let milk, crops and other foodstuffs to go to waste. It is more painful when just the other day we had nothing to eat in most parts of Kenya when pictures of our starving populations were a permanent fixture on international television screens.

In this day and age, we have the knowhow and capacity to process milk, store for our use or export into the neighboring countries. In this day and age, we should process and preserve every farm produce for future use even if it means supplying the same to our local schools and other institutions of higher learning at subsidized rates. We cannot afford to buy imported milk from our super markets as we throw away our glut. It just doesn’t make sense.
jerry@jerryokungu.com