Dream big to grow agriculture sector

A woman buys milk at a Nyeri supermarket. The country produces around five million tonnes of milk, most of which is consumed locally. FILE 

By Robert Bunyi

In Summary

• Kenya has the capacity to be the food basket of the world if it explores markets.

New Zealand is a fascinating country, and not just for rugby lovers. Its economy is hinged on two important sectors, tourism and agriculture, just like Kenya’s.

New Zealand’s economy, however, is huge — more than three and a half times the size of Kenya’s GDP. Yet its population is about one-tenth, at 4.6 million.


The country lends itself as a great yardstick of our agricultural potential.

New Zealand’s land mass is about 46 per cent that of Kenya and crucially, the proportion of land considered arable by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is around 43.2 per cent (11.3 million hectares).

Kenya’s arable land is about 48.2 per cent, more than double that of New Zealand at 27.4 million hectares.

In terms of value of production in each country, milk is the number one agricultural commodity. FAO estimates that in 2011 total production of milk in Kenya stood at four billion litres while for New Zealand it stood at 17.9 billion litres, almost four and half times more than Kenya.

Kenya produces 0.15 litres of milk per available hectare of arable land per year while New Zealand produces 1.57 litres per hectare per year. That is well over 10 times more productivity.

The contrast gets even starker when you review where all this milk production goes to. In Kenya we consume close to 100 per cent of the milk produced, while in New Zealand domestic consumption is no more than three per cent, with the rest exported.

The value of New Zealand’s dairy exports totalled $6.45 billion (Sh555 billion) in 2011. On the other hand the total value of Kenya’s top 20 agricultural exports (excluding flowers) totalled $1.74 billion (Sh150 billion) in the same year. Those are a humbling statistics

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New Zealand’s superior dairy industry is founded on serving an export market and this is what our Agriculture ministry should focus on.

The UN projects that the population of the Middle East and North Africa will be the fastest growing over the next decade or two. By 2050 the population is expected to have doubled to 700 million.

This is a region with constrained food production opportunities and given our proximity, should be a relatively easy market to service.

New Zealand is already alive to the opportunity to export more agricultural produce into the region and has placed specific focus into winning export contracts.

To truly boost production in Kenya we need to refocus towards export markets because that is where the sustainable demand exists. Our economy is small and our own domestic consumption capacity is constrained by low per capita GDP levels.

To jump out of this we need to trade with the world, with the help of a more flexible agriculture sector that is responsive to changing dynamics in export markets.

The Ministry of Agriculture needs to lead on this front and rope in the Trade and Foreign Affairs ministries to secure the market access rights.