vue - Revolutionizing Finance for Agriculture value chains

"RUTO CALLS FOR PARADIGM SHIFT IN AGRICULTURE 15/07/14 DPPS Deputy President William Ruto has challenged experts in the agricultural sector in Africa to develop farming models that will help improve production to stem rising food shortage in the continent. Mr. Ruto said perennial food shortage will not be addressed if the continent continues to use wrong approaches. He noted that the much taunted small holder agricultural practice has failed to solve the challenges of persistent food shortage in the continent. ''I ask the experts to re-think and come up with another model because small holder agriculture has proved incapable to solving perennial food shortage,'' he said. Mr. Ruto stated the need for a paradigm shift to enable the continent feed herself and produce what is commercially viable-adding that Kenya had adopted large scale irrigation as a viable option. The Deputy President made the remarks today while addressing an international conference on Revolutionizing finance for agri-value chains at the Kenya School of monetary studies. The conference brings together over 700 delegates from private and public sector mainly drawn from African banks, regional and national farmers' organizations, agri-value chain stakeholders to share experiences and lessons on agri-value chain finance. He said on average, a commercial irrigation farmer produces 5 times more than a small holder farmer in the country hence the shift to new farming model. ''Statistics show that small holder farmer in Kenya produces an average of 15 to 18 bags of maize per acre where as a commercial farmer using irrigation produces 80 to 90bags per acre," he said. Mr. Ruto told the conference that the government had opted to expand land under irrigation to increase food produce. '' As policy makers in Kenya we have chosen to bring more land under irrigation, beginning this year, we will progressively t bring more land under irrigation for food production,'' he said adding that ''in our blue print, we want to put 1million acres under irrigation to produce and expand food production because we believe that in the next five years we should export five million tonnes of grain from Kenya''. At the same time Deputy President called on financial institutions to lower basic lending rates so that farmers can borrow and invest in farming. He said the current rates were prohibitive making it difficult for farmers to take loans from banks. ''Financing and Interest rate are subjects that inform access to credit by entrepreneurs and by farmers and should not be an impediment to the cost of production,'' he said. He said that Ministers of finance and Governors of Central banks should come up with policies that encourage banks to offer cheap loans. The Deputy President asked policy makers to work with the private sector to expand mechanization and use of technology to increase production. The meeting was addressed by Nigerian Minister for Agriculture Dr. Benect okey oramah who is also executive Vice President Afreximbank. Others who addressed the meeting were Uganda's finance Minister Peace Tumuisime ,Cabinet Secretaries Henry Rotich , Felix Koskei and central bank Governor Professor Njuguna Ndug'u. Ends/Isiye/DPPS"