Nairobi — THIS WEEK'S BAN on maize exports from Kenya was a desperate but necessary move to stave off an embarrassing shortage of a staple on which millions of Kenyans rely on for food.

But it was also a strong affirmation of the enduring lack of progressive strategy that has plagued the agriculture docket since the 1980s when the short-sighted World Bank demands for governments to reduce public spending on education, health, agriculture and other key sectors were embraced.

The impact of those measures, whose effect was to effectively eliminate safety nets that governments provided for the poor and ensure a modicum of equity in access to services and resources, would have been mitigated if those running the agriculture docket had been more creative and strategic.

The jury is still out on whether Agriculture minister William Ruto will perform much better than his predecessors, but some of his actions suggest clearly that this may not be the case.

Fighting sugar barons is not a bad thing, but would it not be much more effective to buttress this with a firm focus on implementing policies that ensure we eliminate the sugar production deficits that sustain those cartels?

It is vastly easier and eventually more worthwhile to address the concerns of farmers that range from late or non-payment for sugar delivered to millers, poor payments that do not cover costs, high input costs and very poor infrastructure in the sugar growing areas.

Resolving these issues will motivate farmers to increase the acreage under crops, to husband the crops more diligently, and thereby boost the yields that should, in time, lead to self-sufficiency.

And the same logic would be applied to virtually every sector in agriculture.

The fact that a partial crop failure as a result of poor rains would plunge the country into the crisis it is in now is pathetic.

The current problem has very little to do with rain and everything to do with the disparate and illogical policies pursued by the Government.

Elimination of the very useful seasonal credit facility for a long time was a dumb move, as has been the unwillingness of the Government to subsidise farmers to access inputs whose prices have rocketed over the years.

One requires more than Sh25,000 to farm one acre of maize for a yield of 25 bags of maize that will fetch Sh35,000 after waiting period of up to one year.

Not all farmers who delivered maize to the National Cereals and Produce Board last year have been paid, as there was a backlog from the previous year!

Farmers have been complaining about this insensitivity for years. Many have abandoned maize farming altogether.

The Government has appeared helpless, as population pressure has fostered retrogressive land use practices, the most alarming being the balkanisation of plots into very small, economically unviable units.

And this, in key agricultural districts like Uasin Gishu, Nandi, Trans Nzoia, Bungoma and Nakuru!

Dairy farmers suffered for a long time, and though happier today, they are not out of the woods yet.

Tea farmers are uprooting the bushes, fed up with the lack of protection against uncompromising global market conditions that are affected as much by the politics in Pakistan as by the weather in Kericho.

Coffee farming is in a constant spin - again at the complete mercy of either the weather or the cartels that either buy the coffee in auctions, mill it, or retail it like Starbucks.

Pyrethrum and sunflower farmers gave up, as did the cotton growers.

Again, it is not like there are no activities.

The Sh30 billion it got this year will be used mainly on recurrent costs, and some on projects like the National Agriculture and Livestock Extension Programme, the Arid Lands Resource Management Project, the Smallholder Dairy Commercialisation Programme, the Eastern Province Horticulture and Traditional Food Crops Project, and others.

But in focusing on these projects and sectors, it is even more crucial that those sectors that guarantee food security like maize and livestock farming, that provide jobs to millions of Kenyans, that contribute directly to foreign exchange earnings (coffee, tea), are not relegated.

This, unfortunately, is what has happened and Mr Ruto must deliberately place their recovery at the centre of his, and the ministry's, strategy.

Otherwise, he will fail like his predecessor who, with little to show for his tenure at the ministry, is now demanding that a bag of maize should fetch Sh2,400! Very funny.