KMC to buy livestok at sh 180 per kilo, In Narok

Kenyan Government is in the process of providing funds to enable
Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) to buy livestock from farmers
who want to offload some of their animals from Narok County
this dry season.

The Principal Secretary in the State Department of Livestock
Professor Fred Segor said KMC will buy the livestock at
sh.180 per kilo and urged farmers to take advantage of this
opportunity to offload some of their animals and use the
money for other economic activities instead of leaving them to
die due to drought.

Prof. Segor advised farmers to practice sustainable livestock
faming by keeping only those animals that they can manage
instead of keeping many animals which eventually die of
drought and diseases leading to huge economic loses.

The PS was speaking in Narok yesterday where he
commissioned a new livestock market in Duka Moja, a 50,000
hay storage facility at Sheep and Goats research centre in
Narok town and a demonstration fish pond and rehabilitated
water spring in Mulot area.

The projects were funded by United Nation Development
Progranme (UNDP) under the Sustainable Land Use (SLM)
project in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture,
Livestock and Fisheries. Under the project, farmers are trained
on proper farming and livestock keeping as well as proper land
use in order to make farming activities sustainable.
Farmers who have benefitted from this pilot programme were
enabled to purchase good quality breeds of livestock and
chicken in order to improve their local breeds for better
productivity. The project in being piloted in Narok, Kitui, Embu
and Garissa Counties.

Prof. Segor said the project targets Arid and Semi-arid (ASAL)
areas of the country where land has been degraded due to
inappropriate land use such as over-exploitation of available
pastures by training farmers and equipping them with proper
farming and land management skills.

The Ps said the Livestock market will enable farmers to sell
their animals without being exploited by middlemen and urged
the farmers to make use of the market.

He also noted, a lot of vegetation that could go into feeding
livestock during dry weather is lost in the rain season due to
lack of equipment and machinery to process the same into
fodder and lack of proper storage for the fodder and the
50,000 bales of hay capacity store at the Sheep and Goats
research Centre will go a long way in improving processing and storage of hay for livestock in the county and improve their productivity.

The fish pond which was equipped with 1,200 fingerlings is
geared towards helping the farmers to diversify their farming
activities in order to improve food security. The water project
at Omomet village in Mulot area will help provide clean
drinking water to over 2,000 people and their livestock.

Also present at the function were; national Director of
Livestock Mr. Julius Kiptarus, UNDP national SLN programme
analyst Ms. Zeinabu Khalif who has been instrumental in the
project as she was the project manager at the Ministry before
moving to UNDP, County Executive member in charge of
Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Mr. Richard Birir among
other dignitaries.