Kenya is looking for a model in which public land is leased to private investors for food & cash crop production that is less reliant on rain-fed agriculture & more reliant on irrigation.
Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture will fund key state corporations to convert 500,000 acres of idle land to maize production, even as the government seeks to lease out more unutilized farms to the private sector.
Harsama Kello, the country’s Agriculture PS, stated that they had mapped out land belonging to Kenya Agriculture Livestock Research Organisation, Kenya National Youth Service, Kenya Prisons, and Agriculture Development Corporation to be cropped.
Mr. Kello stated that plans are already in the works to have the Agriculture Finance Corporation (AFC) lend to these state agencies in order for them to grow maize and alleviate annual shortages. “We have identified 500,000 acres that we will finance through AFC to enable these government agencies to convert their idle land to food production,” he said.
This is the first time the government has stated that it intends to use parastatals to grow more food on idle land.
The government of former President Uhuru Kenyatta had passed a Cabinet resolution to lease the land to the private sector. The PS stated that they would continue to lease the land to private investors and private companies capable of farming large tracts of land.
Mr. Kello stated that the funds to be loaned to these entities would be used to mechanise farms and purchase farming equipment to ensure that vast swaths of land produce enough maize over the next two years.
He stated that the process of having these corporations use idle land and lease it to private investors had begun. Mr. Kenyatta’s administration approved a policy for the large-scale commercialization of public land used for maize production.
The policy, which was adopted in May, aims to provide a framework for the use of idle public-sector land for large-scale commercial agricultural production. Kenya is looking for a model in which public land is leased to private investors for food and cash crop production that is less reliant on rain-fed agriculture and more reliant on irrigation.