Bizna came across this hard-hitting commentary on Mumias Sugar on one of its social media platforms. What are your views regarding it?
“Sadly, Mumias is dead. Besides looting, Kenyan farmers are generally lazy jokers. They prefer lazy kind of farming. And modern-day cane farming is a perfect example of such. They plant, sorry throw, cane cuttings in shallowly done gullies in farms, and wait for 18 months for a bumper harvest! Weeding and top dressing my foot!
Look, when Mumias was Mumias, the company had to push farmers and actively participate in production of better cane crop. I used to see extension officers all over, helping farmers to better their sugar cane husbandry. The moment these services vanished, farmer went back to the aforementioned shenzi farming practices. So even if Mumias got back on its feet, chances are we will be faced with yet another huge challenge; acute sugar cane supply. Most farmers moved on.
Few remaining ones are mediocre. So as we shout “bail out…bail out” and “looting…” let’s also focus on the lazy farmer and how to help him move on to other equally lucrative ventures. We shout from rooftops, “revamp Pan paper…revamp Pan paper…” but nobody stops to ask whether farmers are still interested in tree farming. Same madness with textile Industry. We whine about the industr y’s lost glory, but even if money was to be thrown at the problem, who is interested in cotton farming with the all the uncertainty?
The size of canes you see in farms and being transported to the factories–both towards Mumias and West Kenya– are too tiny you even want to cry. Methinks it’s time farmers tried other crops. I knew cane farming had become useless when headmasters began refusing farmers’ promissory notes from Mumias Sugar as surety for school fees.
Thing is, the earlier we encourage the few remaining cane farmers to invest elsewhere the better. But the tragedy is, like I began, most farmers are lazy because they don’t want proper farming, say, poultry, dairy, and other lucrative ones that require hands-on approaches.”
