Farmers Petition Parliament To Review EU Policy

Farmers, led by industry associations the Fresh Produce Consortium of Kenya, the National Potato  Council of Kenya, and the Cereal Growers Association, have lodged a petition with parliament seeking the review and overturning of a recommendation from the parliamentary health committee that the industry claim will be catastrophic for Kenya. 

Under pressure from environmental lobbyists and following a petition from the organic farming group  Route to Food, the health committee took up a new mantle in determining agricultural policy in Kenya and has recommended to parliament that it ban all agricultural inputs in Kenya that are banned in  Europe. 

However, the committee did not review the European Union policies that have led to the bans, taking it on the word of NGO witnesses that these were food safety issues, and failing to ascertain that the policies that have led to the bans in Europe have been disputed by the rest of the world, including  Kenya, as unscientific trade barriers. 

Kenya is one of 45 countries that has contested the EU’s input policies and bans through the World  Trade Organisation, in a seven-year dispute, number STC 382, in which the EU has been asked to provide scientific grounds for the bans, which it has never yet done.

The policies have also been rejected vigorously by the US as unscientific and also fly in the face of the world food safety system run jointly by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Food and Agriculture  Organisation. 

“It speaks to a constitutional oversight that the health committee can recommend the most serious agricultural policy change in a generation and never even seek the input of the agricultural committee or any agricultural policymakers, appearing to be completely unaware, too, of our own nation’s foreign policy and trade position on the same matter,” said Ojepat Okisegere, CEO of the Fresh  Produce Consortium, Kenya.

Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya recently announced a new drive to address the country’s rising pest levels, saying Kenya needed to boost overall farmer productivity and protect and safeguard the nation’s agriculture from external threats, including the introduction of foreign pests and diseases. 

However, the health committee has simultaneously asked parliament to ban the majority of the country’s crop protection products, in a meltdown that will lead to a near-immediate maize crisis,  close the country’s coffee estates, cut tomato production by 80 percent, and savage the production of potatoes, wheat, rice, onions, and most other crops. 

“We hope with this petition that the government will reconsider where agricultural policy should sit,  under what circumstances we adopt foreign legislation, when we act in opposition to our own trade  and foreign policy positions, and whether it is right to sacrifice our food security and GDP without any  impact assessment at all.” 

The farmers and growers seek a review of the committee recommendations for their impact, arguing there is no merit in bypassing an impact assessment that would certainly have been undertaken to achieve new legislation but has not been commissioned as part of this recommendation. 

“We seek decisions based on science and proven studies, rather than anecdotes, hearsay, and misconstrued policies. It is not enough to be told another region has a different policy and calls it food safety when their policy is about different targets that we have never adopted,” said Mr. Okisegere. 

With the Pest Control Produces Board now instructed to review the status of every crop protection and public health product banned under the EU’s environmental changes, the farmers are also demanding that the reviews be properly resourced so that they can be based on science and scientific studies and not delivered through political pressure without proof or grounds.