Kirinyaga County farmers are upbeat about the subsidized fertilizer that has been availed to them in fulfilment of President William Ruto’s pledge to farmers.
The County has already registered 17,000 farmers in the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) database.
The number is expected to go higher after the conclusion of the ongoing farmers’ registration exercise.
Speaking during the Kirinyaga County Assembly’s inaugural sitting, Governor Anne Waiguru reiterated that her administration was committed to supporting farmers to maximize agricultural production.
Once they are registered, the farmers are supposed to make their requisition and pay for the commodity after which the department of agriculture collates the data from various farmers and transports them from NCPB deport to ward centres for collection by individual farmers.
“To promote other areas of agriculture, we are at the forefront of lobbying for subsidized farm inputs to reduce the cost of production and enable farmers to get better returns. We have already secured over 25,000 bags of fertilizer in our NCPB stores this month and we are in the course of distributing it to our farmers through our agricultural extension offices”, the governor stated.
On their part, farmers are looking forward to receiving the fertilizer in the hope that it will help them get better harvests in the coming season.
Albert Njeru from Njukii-ini ward lauded governor Waiguru for enabling easy access of fertilizers to farmers by taking them to the ward levels.
He added that the reduction of price of DAP from Ksh6,500 to Ksh3,500 would go a long way in enabling farmers get better harvests in the coming season.
Magdaline Maina, another farmer from Kanyeki-ini stated that the subsidized commodity will enable her to expand on the area of land that she has been tilling which will, in turn, increase harvest and fetch better income.
The farmers also expressed gratitude towards President Ruto for fulfilling his election pledge on subsidized fertilizers saying that smallholder farmers are pivotal in stimulating the economic growth at the grassroots in support of the bottom up economic model.
The ongoing registration at the ward levels requires a farmer to prove land ownership and the size of the land and the bags they would require to buy.
Registered farmers also have the option of walking into the NCPB depot and personally collecting fertilizers. Kirinyaga County is a predominantly agricultural county with 52,890 hectares being used for subsistence farming.
The rising cost of farm inputs such as fertilizers has however made many farmers shy away from crop farming, but with interventions such as subsidized fertilizers, more farmers are expected to increase agricultural production.
