Kenya has for the last three days been hosting Rice Breeding Innovations (RBI) National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems Partners’ Annual workshop for East and Southern Africa.
The workshop attended by delegates from the COMESA region, which is the first held in the Country after the COVID 19 pandemic discussed and shared on how countries can be able to strive to achieve rice self-sufficiency in their countries.
Speaking during the workshop, the Kenya Agricultural Livestock and Research Organization (KALRO) Director General Eliud Kireger said Kenya’s rice sufficiency ratio is at 14.7% and this state of affairs is a clear indication of need to exchange knowledge among the countries to address the production challenges.
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Food security
“Currently the rice self-sufficiency ratio for Tanzania and Madagascar is more than 75% while for Kenya and Ethiopia is less than 30%”, the DG said in a statement read on his behalf by Dr. Lusike Wasilwa, Head of Crop Systems at KALRO.
Dr. Kireger noted the importance of transforming Kenya’s subsistence from smallholder agriculture to commercially oriented sector that sustainably supports the country’s food and nutrition security and socio-economic development.
The Government identified rice as one of the three major food security crops along maize and potatoes and currently the annual consumption growth rate for rice is 12% compared to maize at 1% and wheat 4%. Despite the importance of rice in Kenya, the DG however noted that the domestic sector has not satisfied the increasing demand which continues to escalate by the year.
“The population of the middle class and urbanization of consumers who are increasingly relying on rice for food is growing which means that the demand for food will lead to a significant deficit in milled rice if it is not addressed,” he said
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Currently, the demand for rice per individual per year is 25.3kgs. In 2020 the domestic rice production was estimated at 181,000 MT while consumption was 1.2 million MT forcing the country to import the 953,000 MT of the rice. In the same period, the bulk of rice consumed in Kenya was imported from Asian Countries at sh. 25 billion.
He acknowledged that rice production in Kenya is faced by a myriad of challenges with commercial rice varieties available in the country being low yielding and restricted to lowland irrigated ecologies. The Meeting Dr. Kireger said, looked at the challenges in rice production and seed systems, exchanged results on promising lines and innovations of all breeding programmes that will be aligned to regional and country products concepts and markets.
Top on the discussion list was the Direct Seeded Rice (DSR), A technology for future, to address the emerging scenario of water and labour shortage, informed opportunities for developing and releasing market driven varieties all geared towards improving productivity and competitiveness of domestic rice resulting to self-sufficiency in East and Southern Africa.
