Livestock ministry seeks more cash to replenish herds

The Livestock ministry is seeking additional funds from Treasury to help farmers replenish their herds after the recent biting drought and floods in parts of the country.

It wants Sh700 million in addition to the Sh130 million earmarked for the exercise, said permanent secretary Kenneth Lusaka, adding that they had prepared a Cabinet memo requesting for the money.

“The memo is ready and we shall present it so those who lost their herds can find a new source of livelihood,” he told participants at a forum in Nairobi to discuss challenges facing the leather industry.

Estimates by the ministry showed that about 6,700 households lost livestock worth Sh24 billion during the drought alone.

The PS, however, warned that farmers would be subject to strenuous vetting procedures to avoid abuse of the exercise that comes only months after the government used Sh200 million to purchase livestock ravaged by the drought.

“The reviews will be thorough so that those who were handed money to re-stock must show proof of their action. We hope the money wasn’t wasted on other things yet livestock remains the main source of livelihood for many,” he said.

In an humanitarian gesture at the peak of the drought, the government offered to buy weakened animals from farmers for slaughter at the Athi-River-based Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) plant to help cushion them from the excesses of unfavourable weather.

The re-stocking programme, if fully implemented would come as a major boost for communities living in the arid and semi arid regions that were hardest-hit by the drought that ravaged the country for a better part of 2009. Livestock keepers from such arid areas and main milk producing like the Rift Valley are already targeted for coverage by a Sh400 million fodder improvement programme launched in late 2009 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to help improve their terms of trade.

The effects of the ravaging drought saw most pastoralist communities moving to sell off their livestock at throw away prices in order to source for key food items including sorghum and maize.

“In the majority of pastoral households in Kenya, and the family unit is relatively sedetary, meaning that if the livestock move, there is little food for the family that remains behind, By focusing on fodder production along three of the most important rivers in Kenya’s arid and semi arid land, the project will ensure feed is available for core milking herd that can support the family,” Mr Castro Camarada, FAO representative in Kenya, said in November when he launched the programme.

“My office is determined to carry out its mandate of raising levels of nutrition, improving agricultural productivity and the lives of rural populations, in order to help Kenya achieve vigorous economic growth. A key step towards this will be the improvement of terms of trade for livestock keepers,” the official said.

The FAO fodder programme is helping to control the current trend in which pastoralist communities lost out heavily whenever they sold off part of their herds to purchase food rations. For instance ,during the ravaging drought in 2009, some desperate farmers in parts of the country opted to give away fully grown animals for as little as Sh500 against a normal market price of between Sh10,000 and Sh15,000 depending on the size of the animal.

Animal health

The FAO initiative will also focus on areas such as animal health and husbandry-related knowledge transfer. Some 800,000 doses of the Rift Valley Fever vaccine have already been imported as part of the health component of the project. An outbreak of disease four years ago left the livestock industry with losses estimated at Sh2 billion while 155 people were killed and more than 700 infected.

North Eastern province bore the brunt of the attack, with 333 cases of infections reported, closely followed by Rift Valley province with 141 cases while Coast and Central provinces recorded 14 and 13 incidents respectively.