Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has said the government expects a bumper harvest from the current planting season after farmers took up more fertilizers compared to the previous season.
According to Kagwe, there has been an unprecedented high demand for fertilisers, with 180,000 bags of the farm input ordered daily. "This surge in demand has been driven by increased awareness of the fertilizer subsidy program, with over 5.9 million crop farmers now registered on the Kenya Integrated Agricultural Management Information System (KIAMIS)," said CS Kagwe in a statement.
He said his ministry has noted a trend where farmers who had previously benefited from the fertilizer subsidy program are doubling the amounts they took in the last season, further making the commodity scarce.
Some farmers have recently reported being unable to get the fertilizers in the amounts they need after some National Cereal and Produce Board (NCPB) stores opted to ration the commodity for every farmer to get a piece of the pie.
