Kenyan students want their government to take urgent steps to safeguard the country’s food security and protect consumers from the threats of a broken food system.
Youths from eight Kenyan universities, joined other stakeholders in celebrating today’s World Food Day (WFD), and urged the Kenyan government to put in place policies that are aligned to ecological farming practices. The forum supported by Greenpeace Africa, called for an improved policy to ensure smallholder farmers who constitute 30% of Kenya’s farming population, control the food chain and determine how food is produced.
Reene Olende – Greenpeace Africa’s Senior Food for Life Campaigner - called for activities to raise awareness on food sovereignty and ecological farming that promotes resilience measures in response to climate change and empowers farmers especially those in rural settings.
“Kenya is grappling with the effects of climate change and the pressure to feed its people. The solution is for the government to support and enable a food sovereignty system that calls for a shift from Industrial agriculture to ecological farming,” she said.
Sustainably grown food is guaranteed through ecological farming, which combines indigenous knowledge, modern science and innovation with respect for nature and biodiversity.
Various speakers at the Forum under this year's theme “Change the future of migration: investing in food security and rural development”, hailed the advantages of ecological agriculture. Joshua Oluyai from Kenyan Ministry of agriculture said organic agriculture has several health benefits and should be encouraged in the food consumption and value system benefits.
Winnie Kamau –an Organic Agriculture expert says the new faming method will help eliminate extreme poverty in Africa by 2025 besides ending hunger and malnutrition in Africa by 2025. This will make Africa a net food exporter in the global value chains where it has comparative advantage.
The meeting called on Kenyan government to support ecological farming by providing indigenous seed to farmers, water for irrigation, training on modern and sustainable farming practices, refocus extension services and credit programmes. It was organized by Institute for Culture and Ecology (ICE), Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC) and Kenya Organic Agriculture Network (KOAN)
