The food situation in the country has now stabilized.
Agriculture Permanent Secretary Dr Romano Kiome said Thursday the measures put in by the government including the economic stimulus spending has paid dividends leading to high food yields.
He made the remarks when he launched CountryStat, a Food and Agriculture Organisation - FAO internet database for use by policy planners for the
agriculture sector. Dr Kiome said Kenya is yet to fulfill the Maputo declaration requiring that all the 53 countries on the continent allocate 10 per cent of their national budgets to the agriculture sector.
Kiome however noted that Kenya has made tremendous strides in increasing her budgetary allocation to the sector.
"In 2003 we had just under Kshs 9 billion allocated to the Agriculture sector, this financial year the government allocated Kshs 29 billion with another Kshs 2.9 billion coming through the stimulus spending set aside by Treasury," said Kiome.
The PS said that extension of staff coverage in the Ministry of Agriculture is still below the national requirement of one extension officer to every 400 farmers.
"We have just one officer for every 789 farmers, this came about owing to the long embargo that was slapped on employment on employment of extension service staff".
CountryStat Country Co-ordinator Abner Ingosi said the new technologically enabled information data base will assist in decision making for the policy planners in order to make informed decisions on the agriculture sector.
The Food and Agriculture Organization Country Representative Dr Catro Camarada urged government officers to apply the information in decision making in order to further improve the food production situation in the country.
CountryStat is a statistical framework and applied information system for analysis and policy-making designed in order to organize, integrate and disseminate statistical data and metadata on food and agriculture coming from different sources.
It has been initiated by 17 countries and Kenya is the first to launch her own CountryStat.
