By Bisola Adeyemo
Kenya government has moved to deplore strategy on improving varieties of rice production, and bridge the country’s deficit to reduce importation of related products.
The government also aimed at achieving growing of rice through the “National Rice Development Strategy (NRDS) that runs from 2019 to 2030.
Kenya’s domestic rice sector has not satisfied the increasing demand for rice and this is aggravated by the population growth of the middle class and urbanization with people who are increasingly relying on rice for food.
Dr. Mary Mutembei from State Department of Crops at the Ministry of Agriculture and Head of rice promotion programme told farmers during farmer’s field day at the Bura Irrigation Scheme where the Kenya Agricultural Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), KNA said.
According to Mutembei, the whole idea of improving rice production in Kenya is to gear towards increasing food security and incomes through sustainable rice production.
“We spent Ksh25 billion last year to import rice despite us tripling our production from 50,000 metric tons to 150,000 metric tons in the last 10 years and this shows there is still a huge gap to fill.
“More intervention is needed to increase the area under rice production, improve irrigation infrastructure and currently we have identified 24 counties where rice can be produced comfortably,” she said.
Mutembei added that the development of new varieties and new technologies, by KALRO through research has seen farmers embrace and now will not only progress the rice value chain but be able to satisfy the country’s demand.
Dr. Ruth Musila, a plant breeder from KALRO said the gap between rice production and consumption in Kenya is huge with imports representing 89 percent.
“The year 2020/2021, the country consumed 730, 000 metric tonnes yet we only produce 80,000 metric tonnes, and importing around 650,000 metric tonnes,” she explained.
Musila said that in order to reduce the gap, strategic interventions such as embracing improved high yielding rice varieties practicing good agronomic practices for rice production, mechanization and expansion of irrigation schemes is needed.
KALRO together with International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and other partners, she said have released high yielding rice varieties to rid of the low yielding seeds that were released over 30 years ago and that farmers have been planting and recycling for long.
“We are promoting and popularizing the new varieties to increase adoption by using on farm trials and farmer field days and so far we have released Komboka and 08FAN10 since last year that are doing very well both in Mwea and also here in Bura irrigation scheme but also being introduced in 24 other locations across the country,” Musila said.