In August 2006, I traveled to Kenya. Traveling through the country with a guide that should have been a political science professor, an agronomist and a linguist all rolled into one made it one of the most fascinating trips I have experienced. I discovered that despite repatriation of land, some of the most agriculturally viable parcels and the largest plantations continue to belong to British land owners. I learned that Kenya has the capability to grow a variety of crops, both for domestic consumption and export, in addition to the traditional ones grown there like tomatoes, coffee and macadamia nuts, but lack of government investment and difficulty finding an export market for higher end products makes it impossible. For example, Kenyans don’t reap the benefits of their coffee production. The profit is in the finished coffee, not the beans, and Europe and the U.S. will not import processed coffee from Africa, keeping the most profitable component for themselves.
We learned that the government did a study some years ago that demonstrated that Kenyan soil could support viniculture that would rival the South African wine trade. The downside is that it would take 50 years to develop to that point. Because they did not feel confident that high end wine drinkers would accept Kenyan wine, they were unwilling to make the investment. While sustaining local agriculture and food needs should come first, this seemed a shame as it could add to the Kenyan economy. Plus, our guide told us that people in Kenya are poor, but they are not hungry. He explained that food production in Kenya was not a problem. The landscape seemed to bear that out, with its large swathes of farmland.
Yet Kenya today, like so many parts of the world, is facing a food crisis and it is getting worse. The U.N. just announced that a fungi, Rice Blast disease, has wiped out as much as 20% of Kenya’s annual rice production, 5,600 hectares, in the rice basket of the country. This coming at a time of rapidly rising rice and wheat prices is bad news for Kenyans and bad news for the new coalition government. 
This food insecurity also comes on the heals of some of the worst political violence that Kenya has seen in decades, with an extended period of ethnic violence that led to the deaths of more than 1,200 people and displacement of others numbering in the hundreds of thousands as a result of contested election results. The violence has only recently been checked through a power sharing agreement.
Rice Blast disease is one of the most virulent rice diseases world wide and has been found in 85 countries, as reported by allAfrica. It is exacerbated by increased rainfall this season. The fungus is also highly adaptable, so while efforts are being made to identify resistant varietals, this is likely not going to be the answer and in fact may eventually make things worse.
In an attempt to address the crisis, the coalition government, just recently sworn in, has instructed the National Cereals and Produce Board to cut the price of fertilizers by 50% to ease the burden for struggling farmers. This may be misguided on a number of levels; synthetic fertilizers do nothing to help soil conservation and in fact, deplete the soil. Ultimately, they add to the cost of the food and to land insecurity. Even if they are using natural fertilizers, the fungal attack is an indicator of a much bigger problem -- that of monocrops. An indicating factor in Rice Blast outbreaks is poor crop rotation practices.
Ultimately, the disease needs to be addressed through an integrated crop management system, beginning with looking at 5,600 hectares as an area on which to grow a variety of crops for local consumption, perhaps even some for the export market, but not simply crops that are subsidized, getting the highest prices at market for the moment, or that the seed, chemical fertilizer and pesticide peddler has told you is a sure thing.
Poor crop rotation and lack of diversity leads to soil erosion, susceptibility to disease and pests, and the need to import products in an area that has the capacity to be self sufficient. It doesn’t help that western food aid programs flood African markets with cheap grains from the U.S. and Europe, rather than buying grain from local farmers to help boost the local economy. Sadly, right now there may not be enough grain to buy even if the west wanted to implement sane aid policies. That is a true shame in a beautiful country that should be so agriculturally rich.
