Ruto’s Wicked Harvest: How The Horticultural Bill Will Starve 3 Million Farmers And Feed His Foreign Masters

In ancient times, the farmer was revered, even deified, for nurturing life from the soil. But in William Ruto’s Kenya, it seems the farmer is nothing more than a criminal waiting to be apprehended. With the Horticultural Crop Authority Bill 2024 on the horizon, what should have been a policy to empower smallholder farmers has turned into a masterstroke of cruelty designed to cripple over 3 million souls who depend on farming for survival.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” they pray. But little do they know that in Ruto’s Kenya, that bread will now come with a tax stamp, a NEMA certificate, and soil tests to verify if it’s worthy of consumption. Farmers will need to pay Sh10,000 for NEMA licenses. What a bargain! After all, it’s just a minor cost for the privilege of growing food that people can eat. For a farmer barely making Sh10,000 in profit, this might as well be the price of their dignity.

It’s said, “You don’t ask a hungry man where he got his bread.” Yet here we are, asking farmers to undergo rigorous soil tests at Sh2,500 and water tests at Sh4,700 just to grow the humble kale or tomato. What next? Should they test their sweat too, just to ensure it’s fit for their sacred duty of feeding the nation? We have truly entered a new era of “progress,” where feeding people is an environmental hazard.

As if the tests weren’t enough, Ruto’s government insists on a Sh5,000 certification fee. Farmers now must be certified to plant seeds in their ancestral lands, under the supervision of bureaucrats who wouldn’t know a mango from a guava. It reminds me of the ancient saying: “He who controls the seed controls the harvest.” Only now, the harvest belongs to those in ivory towers, who have never tilled a field but sure know how to tax one.

Then comes the Pest Control Board license at Sh60,000, because God forbid you should try to fight off locusts without a proper license! What’s next, a permit to chase away monkeys? The biblical story of Moses parting the Red Sea comes to mind, but here in Kenya, parting with Sh60,000 is more akin to a miracle. A miracle that these smallholder farmers, many already sinking in debt, will somehow survive this regulatory slaughterhouse.

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But it gets better. To ensure that farmers don’t collapse from the sheer stress of compliance, they’ll now need to undergo two years of first aid training. Ah yes, because knowing CPR will surely save the tomato plants when the crops fail. At Sh15,000, the price is steep, but what’s a little more blood from a stone? I can almost hear the whispers of the ancestors: “It is not the knife that kills, but the man behind it.” And in this case, the knife is called regulation, and it’s wielded by Ruto with astonishing precision.

Perhaps the pièce de résistance of this draconian bill is the risk of jail time for farmers who dare to sell their produce without the proper licensing. Imagine this: A farmer, desperate to feed their family, buys tomatoes from an unlicensed neighbor to sell at the local market. But alas, this is now a crime! The tomatoes must be confiscated, the farmer jailed, and the country saved from this scourge of unregulated vegetables. One can’t help but wonder if the next law will require farmers to pay royalties to the sun for shining on their crops.

In truth, Ruto’s allegiance to his foreign masters is as clear as day. By tightening the noose on smallholder farmers, he ensures that international agribusiness giants will swoop in and buy up the land once the small farmers are forced out. This is not about food security; it’s about control, about turning Kenya’s rich agricultural landscape into a corporate playground where the whims of American investors dictate what we eat and how we grow it.

The Bible says, “By their fruits you shall know them,” and if this bill is Ruto’s fruit, then the tree is rotten beyond repair. The layers of bureaucracy being imposed are not just stifling but demonic. For how else can one describe a policy that seeks to starve the nation in the name of “regulation”? The Pharaohs of old were kinder to their slaves than Ruto is to Kenya’s farmers.

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At this point, it’s not even about farming anymore. It’s about survival. A farmer without land, without seeds, and without the freedom to grow is no longer a farmer. They are a prisoner of the state, shackled by bills, regulations, and the looming threat of imprisonment. And we must ask ourselves: Who benefits from this? Certainly not the farmer. Certainly not the millions of Kenyans who rely on locally grown food. No, the beneficiaries are far away, sitting in air-conditioned offices in New York or Washington, D.C., grinning as they plan their next acquisition.

The ancient Greeks said that the true measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members. And here we are, watching as the backbone of our nation—the farmers who keep us fed—are being systematically dismantled. The irony is suffocating. A government that claims to care about “hustlers” is actively destroying the very people who hustle hardest to keep the country alive.

We’ve heard much talk of the “bottom-up” economy from Ruto, but what this bill represents is nothing more than a “top-down” demolition of Kenya’s food security. This is no accident. This is by design. And if we do not rise up now, the future will see Kenya’s fertile lands barren, our markets flooded with imported produce from countries that have turned our farmers into beggars.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish,” goes the proverb. And in Ruto’s Kenya, the vision is clear: a country where farming is a privilege reserved for the rich, where local farmers are rendered obsolete, and where we are forced to import the very food we could grow ourselves. Is this the legacy we want to leave behind?

Let us not forget the story of Naboth’s vineyard, where a king desired a humble man’s land and did everything in his power to take it. Today, our farmers are Naboth, and Ruto is playing the role of Ahab, driven by greed and blinded by power. But we cannot allow this tragedy to unfold.

If this bill passes, we are not just losing our farmers. We are losing our sovereignty. We are selling our birthright for a bowl of imported soup. And when the famine comes, as it surely will, we will have no one to blame but ourselves for not stopping it.

The time to act is now. We must protect our farmers, for they are the guardians of our future. If we allow Ruto to crush them under the weight of these absurd regulations, we are complicit in the destruction of Kenya’s agricultural heritage. “A stitch in time saves nine,” and right now, we are down to the last thread.

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