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    Kenyan wheat farm­ers urge gov­ern­ment to in­crease im­port tax

    Farm­ers have urged the gov­ern­ment to in­crease the im­port duty on wheat as a way of en­abling Kenyan pro­du­cers to ef­fect­ively mar­ket their products loc­ally.

    The chair­man of the Cer­eal Grow­ers As­so­ci­ation (CGA) Farnie Kruger lamen­ted the low re­turns from the crop are dis­suad­ing farm­ers from cul­tiv­at­ing it.

    Cur­rently, a 90Kg bag of wheat fetches KSh2500 and Kruger hopes that it can be in­creased to KSh3200.

    “It is easier for for­eign farm­ers to get their products into our mar­ket be­cause of the sub­sidies they enjoy from their gov­ern­ments and we hope that our gov­ern­ment will help tame these mar­ket-dis­tort­ing forces,” said Kruger.

    CGAs 30,000 mem­bers want  the gov­ern­ment to re­vise the im­port duty to 35 per cent.

    READ ALSO: Narok Se­cures Sh28b In­vest­ment For Ag­ri­cul­ture

    Mr Kruger fur­ther noted that des­pite wheat being the second-most im­port­ant cer­eal crop after maize in Kenya, the Min­istry of Ag­ri­cul­ture was not doing enough to sup­port its pro­duc­tion.

    He said that farm­ers in Narok and Uasin Gishu counties, which pro­duce more than 70 per cent of the coun­try’s wheat, are cur­rently un­able to sell 350,000 bags pro­duced last sea­son. Kenya pro­duced 420,000 met­ric tonnes of wheat in 2015.

     

    A study by FAO showed that Kenya has been meet­ing its wheat de­mand by im­port­ing from coun­tries such as Rus­sia and Ukraine.

    “Kenya farm­ers mostly pro­duce re­l­at­ively low qual­ity, soft wheat vari­et­ies and higher qual­ity, hard wheat vari­et­ies in a 75:25 ratio. Millers blend im­por­ted hard wheat vari­et­ies with soft wheat in a 40:60 ratio to pro­duce a flour qual­ity that meets Kenyan mar­ket de­mands,” read the re­port.

    The re­search noted that a “qual­ity ad­just­ment needs to be made in com­par­ing Kenya wheat prices with those of im­por­ted wheat.”

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