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Agriculture in Kenya is often in the spotlight — and rightfully so. It employs more than 70% of rural households, anchors the economy, and holds the promise of food security and poverty alleviation. Yet behind the polished headlines, polished farm visits, and ribbon-cutting ceremonies lies a critical flaw in how we invest in this sector: cosmetic investment.
Cosmetic investment refers to highly visible but shallow interventions in agriculture — investments that look impressive but fail to deliver lasting change. Like greenhouses built for the optics — only to gather dust after the cameras leave. Or flashy tractors handed over to communities without training, fuel support, or ownership plans. Or branded seed donations delivered once, with no follow-up or local adaptation. And most recently, the scandal of ‘tainted’ fertilizers. In short, it is agriculture dressed for a camera, not the climate. While these projects generate short-term visibility for sponsors – mostly some public officials, they often bypass the structural and context-specific needs of the farmers they claim to serve. And this approach is quietly but steadily undermining the path to sustainable agriculture and food security in Kenya.
To the outside observer, cosmetic investment appears to be progress. There are photos, figures, and quick wins. But ask the smallholder farmer — the true engine of Kenya’s food system — in some remote village in the County of Homa Bay and a different story emerges. According to the November 2024
Agriculture Sector Survey by the Central Bank of Kenya, over 85 per cent of farmers sampled decried the high costs of inputs especially with regard to fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides — limiting their ability to improve farm yields.
Many farmers still lack access to reliable extension services, tailored climate-smart training, and inclusive financing options. They are handed one-off inputs without support on how to optimize them.
Infrastructure projects are launched without meaningful community consultations. Policies are designed top-down or with superficial citizen involvement, failing to consider the lived realities of those on the ground. In the end, this illusion of progress masks failure and delays genuine reform.
This gap between appearance and impact begs a deeper question: what does meaningful agricultural investment truly look like?
Sustainable agricultural transformation is not glamorous — but it is powerful. It involves long-term investment in farmer capacity through training, mentorship, and peer learning. It requires support for locally led models like farmer cooperatives, producer groups, and SACCOs that build resilience. It includes the strengthening of diversified value chains, investment in agroecology and regenerative practices, and ensuring market access that is fair and transparent. This kind of investment may not make for splashy headlines — but it builds communities that feed themselves and the nation.
At Mifugo Centre, we’ve seen this firsthand. Our “One Farmer, One Month” model was started with five farmers pooling funds to support one member at a time to acquire livestock. That initiative has grown into a grassroots institution built on trust, ownership, and community contribution. There were no ribbon cuttings. But there is impact.
When we continue pouring resources into short-term projects that lack depth, the cost is not just wasted money. It's missed opportunities to build resilient food systems, disillusioned farmers who lose trust in development partners and government subsidies, a generation of youth opting out of agriculture because they don’t see viability, and continued vulnerability to climate change, pests, and global shocks.
If we are serious about Kenya’s food future, we must hold ourselves accountable not just for how much we invest, but how well we invest.
Both State and Non-state actors, development partners included, must shift their lens from performance to partnership. Farmers must be seen not as passive recipients, but as innovators, entrepreneurs, and custodians of our ecological future. We must ask more critical questions: Will this investment still matter in five years? Who owns it? Who maintains it? Does it create dependency or build self-reliance? Is it guided by the voices of farmers or the demands of sponsors?
The best agricultural investment is not loud, but lasting — grounded in patience, context, and the lived realities of farmers. It must motivate farmers to pursue self-reliance and be rooted in integrity, fairness, unity, growth and opportunity — the values that define Mifugo Centre. That way we grow not just the crops — but capacity, dignity, and resilience. If we truly want to feed the nation and thrive in the face of climate change, we must return to the soil — not for show, but for sustenance. We must trade spectacle for substance; let us put away the ribbon and pick up the hoe — and finally invest in a food system that grows more than crops: it grows futures.
Agriculture remains the backbone of Kenya’s economy.
The sector accounted for more than 20 percent of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 2011 and 2021.
If enhanced, it has the potential of boosting food security and contributing to sustainable development.
However, agriculture as a learning subject remains optional and relegated below other subjects in schools.
This is despite Kenya’s Vision 2030 listing the sector as a key contributor to her GDP.
This is coupled with little or rather inadequate investment toward harnessing this potential.
Successive governments since Kenya's independence continue to give lip service to the agricultural sector through inadequate budgetary allocations.
For instance, the sector received a paltry 60 billion shillings of Kenya's annual income in the 2021/2022 budget, and another Sh46.8 billion shillings in the 2022/2023 budget.
The allocations which were at least three times less than what was allocated to the Ministry of Education gave a wide berth to training needs.
These gaps have partly contributed to the under-utilization of arable land for agricultural productivity.
While our arable land is estimated to be around 23 per cent, the Vision 2030 master plan documents that at least a million hectares of that land remain uncultivated.
This has aggravated food insecurity and made hunger inevitable over the years.
These challenges can only be addressed through agricultural consciousness among Kenyans regarding the food production processes.
With the timelines for achieving both Vision 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals target indicators only seven years away, it is important that policymakers in the agriculture and education sector classify agriculture as a core learning subject at all basic education levels.
This is a critical step in ensuring a healthy and food-secure population, thereby escalating efforts towards achieving a world that is free of hunger by the year 2030 in line with SDG 2.
It will also encourage learners to consider agriculture an important career path, not just a plan B when all others fail.
In the end, a healthy and food-secure nation will significantly affect all the remaining 16 SDGs positively, considering that they are interconnected in a way.
The step is also important to increase value in agriculture through the promotion of household and private sector agricultural growth; increased production of crops and livestock; and improved access to markets for smallholder farmers through better marketing strategies.
To achieve these Vision 2030 targets, policymakers and agriculture experts should ride on the ongoing implementation of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) in schools, to jointly make relevant adjustments to the subject, and enable it to contribute meaningfully toward a healthy, hunger-free and food-secure nation.
It is also important that the policymakers deliberately incorporate topics relating to business and economic opportunities in the agriculture sector, which are crucial for improved household incomes.
Improved incomes for small-scale food producers across the country, including women, indigenous people and household farmers are critical in mitigating instances of sexual exploitation, gender-based violence, and intimate partner violence.
Policymakers must also seize the opportunity brought by the implementation of the CBC to re-establish the 4-K clubs in schools.
Schools especially in Kenya’s rural areas harvest parcels of land.
The strengthened 4-K clubs will promote better utilization of this critical resource.
On the other hand, schools with limited spaces could focus on horticulture to boost internal food security while selling the surplus to the locals.
This will not only make running schools sustainable but also relieve parents of the burden of contributing finances for school feeding programmes.
In the long run, a pool of agricultural specialists will emerge as agricultural economists, extension officers and passionate practitioners, thereby enabling local producers to compete with the best in other parts of the world.
The agricultural extension officers will be instrumental in enhancing access to agricultural information among farmers at the community level, especially among smallholder farmers in the villages.
They will also be critical in the collection of scientific data on farming practices and identify gaps that will help improve farm yields.
Besides transforming food production processes and improving post-harvest handling, increased agricultural yields will also facilitate regular access to safe, nutritious and adequate food supplies for all vulnerable populations.
It is also a precursor for better health outcomes in families.
Most importantly is that agricultural consciousness will impart to learners the knowledge of resilient agricultural practices thereby strengthening their capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather patterns, drought, flooding and other natural disasters that contribute to food insecurity.
Clearly, the benefits of making the subject mandatory outweigh the costs that would be incurred in implementing it.
We can all contribute to healthy living and stay free from hunger if, in our own little ways, we partake in the food production processes.
1st published in the Star Newspaper on 15/4/2023 (https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/realtime/2023-04-15-benard-ogoi-make-agriculture-compulsory-in-schools-to-boost-food-security)
