NAIROBI, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Kenyan government on Monday announced deeper subsidies on fertilizer and certified maize seed to help farmers recover from severe, climate-driven drought losses.
Mutahi Kagwe, Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture and Livestock Development, announced in Nairobi that a 50-kg bag of subsidized fertilizer will now cost 2,000 shillings (15.46 U.S. dollars), down from 19.35 dollars. Additionally, the price of a 2-kg packet of certified maize seed has been cut to 1.15 dollars from 2.35 dollars.
"At the heart of this intervention is a simple principle; a farmer who has lost a crop to drought should not lose the ability to plant the next crop because fertiliser and seeds are out of reach," he said in a statement issued in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
Kagwe noted that the seed intervention targets approximately 40 million kilograms at a cost of 46.3 million dollars.
The emergency package follows the failure of the March-May rains, particularly across Kenya's Rift Valley breadbasket, where thousands of maize farmers suffered severe crop failures that threaten national food security. To cushion citizens, Kagwe announced on August 20 that Kenya will import 25 million bags of maize.
To build long-term resilience against these recurrent climate shocks, Kagwe stressed that the government will continue investing in irrigation, water harvesting, and climate-smart agriculture.
