Deputy President Kithure Kindiki has challenged Kenyan farmers to embrace technology, research and innovation as the country seeks to transform agriculture into a more productive, competitive and food-secure sector.
Speaking at the Jamhuri Park ASK Showground in Nairobi during the official opening of the Agriculture and Food Security Transformation Summit, Kindiki said the future of farming lies in smart and precision agriculture, where technology is used to improve yields while reducing wastage and production costs.
“I am very happy to see technology being applied in our farming, the world is moving towards smart farming and I have seen a lot of technology,” he said, citing the increasing use of drones and other technologies in precision farming.
Kindiki said farmers should move away from blanket application of inputs and instead use technology to determine exactly where fertiliser and pesticides are needed.
“That is the future of agriculture where you apply fertilizer and pesticides to the crop that requires that input and not to apply everywhere,” he said. “You can use the right quantities that are needed and this precision farming is the next frontier of our agriculture.”
The Deputy President said the technology drive was part of a broader government strategy adopted four years ago to place agriculture at the centre of Kenya’s economic transformation.
“We upgraded the register of farmers which had only 300,000 of them to the current database of 7.2 million crop farmers and 3 million livestock keepers,” he said, presenting the expanded database as a foundation for better targeting of government interventions.
Kindiki, who was accompanied by Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe, Bungoma Governor Ken Lusaka and other senior officials, also highlighted measures aimed at lowering production costs for farmers.
He said the government’s subsidy programme had reduced the price of a 50-kilogramme bag of fertiliser from Sh7,000 to Sh2,000, while certified maize seed prices had fallen by half, from Sh300 to Sh150 per kilogramme.
The cost of sexed semen used in artificial insemination of dairy cows, he added, had also dropped significantly from Sh8,000 to Sh1,400 per dose, making improved livestock breeding more accessible to farmers.
The government is also pursuing animal health interventions, with 8.9 million cattle already vaccinated under an ongoing programme targeting the country’s estimated 22 million cattle and 50 million small livestock.
Kindiki said the measures were beginning to translate into increased production and earnings across various agricultural value chains. Kenya, he noted, had emerged as Africa’s leading exporter of processed milk, with national milk production rising from 4.6 billion litres to 5.2 billion litres.
The value of dairy exports, he said, had increased from Sh4.9 billion to Sh8.9 billion, while meat exports rose from Sh8.9 billion to Sh12.9 billion.
Beyond livestock, the government is also investing in agro-processing and value addition. Seventeen County Aggregation and Industrial Parks have been completed and are being equipped to support processing, with the aim of enabling farmers to earn more from their produce instead of relying solely on raw commodity sales.
Kindiki also pointed to progress in fisheries and the blue economy, including the development of fishing ports at Shimoni and Liwatoni, 18 fish landing sites, support for fishing communities and investments in aquaculture.
These interventions, he said, had helped increase the value of fisheries and the blue economy from Sh37 billion to Sh59 billion.
At the centre of the transformation, however, Kindiki placed the farmer, whose work he described as critical to Kenya’s food security and economic future.
“At the centre of this impressive transformation is the farmer: hard working, resilient and patriotic enough to know that their work is not just about livelihood, it is also about making our country self-sufficient in matters food,” he said.
