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Policy makers seek bigger agriculture budgets to stop the rise in food prices

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On average, Africa survives on commercial food imports worth about Sh1.4 trillion annually and an additional Sh160 billion in food aid. Photo/FILE

An increasing food imports bill is triggering fears of another food crisis in eastern Africa, leading policy-makers to call for bigger agriculture budgets.

MPs from the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) and national parliaments said thin budgets and increased leasing of farmlands to foreign interests are causing food insecurity.

“The rising food prices in the international market call for an immediate end to ongoing land leases and heavy investment in productive areas to boost African agriculture,” Ms Sabina Kwekwe Tsungu, the chairperson of EALA’s sub-committee on agriculture, tourism and natural resources told a two-day regional food forum in Nairobi this week.

The forum held under the title - Regional Dialogue on the Politics of Food Security in Eastern Africa — comes just one month after Russia banned wheat exports, triggering fresh rallies in global grain prices and raising fears of a food crisis similar to that witnessed in 2008.

The 2008 crisis is believed to have triggered a new scramble for African farmland leases by foreign countries unable to meet national food requirements on their own territory.

“Africa’s land is increasingly targeted for leasing because governments have failed to invest in productivity,” said Mr Lumumba Odenda, the national co-ordinator of the Kenya Land Alliance.

In Kenya, the Qatari Government is expected to lease 40,000 hectares in the Tana Delta to grow food crops under a bilateral deal struck in 2008.

Biwako Bio Laboratory, a Japanese Company, has also been working on plans to acquire 30,000 hectares of land for jatropha production.

In Nyanza, Belgium Company HG consulting is expected to put 42,000 hectares of land under sugarcane production while Dominion Farms Ltd has invested in 17,500 hectares around the Yala Swamp.

Canadian Company Bedford Biofuels is also said to have obtained 160,000 hectares of land for jatropha production.

The same gathering pace in Tanzania where 40 foreign firms have invested millions of shillings on leased lands. Uganda has also leased out a total of 840,127 hectares to Egypt for rice and wheat cultivation.

“While these land leases are usually cut at higher levels, the reality on the ground is that 65 to 70 per cent of land in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania is under customary ownership meaning communities may be getting into commitments that they don’t understand,” said Mr Lumumba.

On average, Africa survives on commercial food imports worth about Sh1.4 trillion ($18 billion) annually and an additional Sh160 billion in food aid.

In contrast, the region has received a total of $920 million on the 2.5 million acres that it has leased over the last five years.

“Experience shows that countries in the region which lead in leasing farmlands also have the highest number of people facing chronic hunger,” Kenya’s Agriculture minister Dr Sally Kosgei, said in a speech read at the Nairobi food security forum.

Under Kenya’s new constitution, land belongs to the citizens of Kenya and foreign interests can only hold it on leases for a period of not more than 99 years.

The provision is expected to tame the pace of foreign land leases.

On the other hand, politicians from the region are pushing for an increase in budgetary allocations to the agricultural sector to hit 13 per cent by 2012.

Pushing for merger

In Kenya, members of the parliamentary committee on agriculture have been pushing for the merger of the five agriculture-related ministries to pave way for increased budgetary allocation from the current combined level of 4.6 per cent to at least 10 per cent from the next fiscal year.

This campaign has already seen the Agriculture ministry appoint a consultant to advise the government on how various laws that regulate the agricultural sector can be harmonised and merged into an Act of Parliament.

“We are also seeking to define how senators can effectively play their oversight roles in agricultural development under the new constitution,” said Mr Erastus Mureithi, a member of the parliamentary committee on agriculture.