Farmers in Kisii county will continue to gain from the National Value Chain Support Programme (NVCSP) designed to provide them with farm in-put subsidies in selected value chains.
In 2021 Kisii county was included in the Programme where registered farmers were set to benefit from the Sh 100 million fund.
Acting Principal Secretary, State Department for Crops Development and Agricultural Research, Dr. Francis Owino commended various actors in the Programme for implementing initiatives and interventions to avail the much needed agricultural inputs to drive and promote agricultural production among farmers across the Nation.
Addressing farmers during the launch of Version III payment platform e-Voucher for the Short Rains of 2022 under the NVCSP, Dr Owino said the interventions are timely and challenged the Programme to reach as many beneficiaries as possible for optimum productivity.
“Unavailability of quality and affordable inputs such as seeds, fertilizer and agro-chemicals has remained a major challenge to agricultural production”, said Dr Owino.
Kisii County Chief officer in charge of Agriculture Geoffrey Mogire urged the government to put more funds in the programme to enable more farmers to benefit.
“Agriculture is the backbone of our economy and Productivity is the key driver of agricultural transformation”, Mogire added.
The Version III payment platform is an improvement of the preceding Version II which was piloted and is still in use in 12 counties on the Maize, Coffee, Rice and Irish Potatoes value chains.
It’s an innovative technology-based system which allows real-time payment of agro-dealers and instant delivery of inputs to farmers.
In the spirit of developing Private-Public Sector Partnership, the Programme is working in collaboration with agro-dealers to improve the last mile delivery of inputs.
The program also aims at empowering Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in a twofold exercise.
So far, more than 2,000 farmers have been able to redeem the farm inputs. Initially the program covered four wards before it was rolled out in all the 45 Wards in Kisii County.
Farm inputs provided in the programme include; maize seed, agro-chemicals, lime, basal and topdressing fertilizers. A farmer contributes 60 percent whereas the government provides 40 percent of the market price of each input under consideration.
