The government has invested Sh.140 million in procuring milk coolers as part of measures to improve smallholder dairy farming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Agriculture Cabinet Secretary (CS), Mwangi Kiunjuri has at the \nsame time said a task force has been appointed to look into challenges \nfacing dairy farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said 14 milk coolers have been bought for small scale dairy farmers in Trans Nzoia County to help farmers preserve their milk. Kiunjuri\u00a0 who\u00a0 was\u00a0 speaking at Ngonyek when he commissioned a milk cooler for Koitogos Dynamic Dairy Co-operative society said that the task force will also look at the marketing challenges facing milk farmers and review the new policy that prohibits farmers from hawking milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the government\u2019s objective is to help her people get better \nservices and added that his ministry was working on ways of ensuring \nthat a farmer gets value for his money through modern technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have built a bull station at Sh.900 million with the aim of getting better breeds and improved production and the price is just Sh200 for the semen,\u201d he said. He said Sh.400million has been set aside to establish an embryo transplant kitty that will see farmers get the sex of the animals they wish to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kiunjuri also issued Sh.5.2 million cheques to farmer groups from the smallholder dairy commercialization programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The beneficiary farmer groups will engage in fodder production and \nmarketing of their produce. Out of 12 groups that benefited today from \nthe smallholder dairy commercialization programme, at least nine \nventured into fodder production and only two in marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier on, governor Patrick Khaemba asked the government to turn its attention to maize production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Khaemba said that challenges facing maize farmers all the way from production to harvesting had been solved by both the devolved unit and the national government. He\u00a0 asked the National government to revive the small-scale farming equipment programme to reduce the cost of production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFarmers have been faced with high production challenges to post-harvest losses and we have not been able to solve their problems because of low funding,\u201d he said. He added, \u201cAs government we should place a zero rate duty on hermetic bags to avoid the high levels of aflatoxin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Khaemba, though erratic climatic weather conditions \ndestabilized farmers at the beginning of the year, the region is \nexpecting a bumper harvest this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Pauline Ikanda<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The government has invested Sh.140 million in procuring milk coolers as part of measures to improve smallholder dairy farming. The Agriculture Cabinet Secretary (CS), Mwangi Kiunjuri has at the same time said a task force has been appointed to look into challenges facing dairy farmers. He said 14 milk coolers have been bought for small […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"news-category":[9],"class_list":["post-6102","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/news\/6102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/news\/6102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6102"},{"taxonomy":"news-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kessff-kenya.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fnews-category&post=6102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}