Hon. Munya revealed that the country targets to have over 200,000 acres under commercial Bt cotton cultivation, creating over 25,000 jobs for Kenyans along the value chain. “These job opportunities will be in cultivation, processing or trading in locally manufactured garments and clothes,” said the CS. “Cultivation of Bt cotton by our farmers will guarantee a constant supply of raw materials to ginneries and cotton processing industries thus supporting value addition and job creation up the value chain,” he added.
Bt cotton is currently planted in 15 countries globally covering an area of 24 million hectares. The top three leading Bt cotton producers are India (11.6 Million hectares), USA (5.06 Million Hectares) and China (2.93 Million Hectares).
Kenya now becomes the latest entrant joining South Africa, Sudan, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria and eSwatini in planting Bt cotton in Africa. Planting Bt cotton has shown it drastically cuts use of harmful insecticides leading to cleaner environments and improved farmer health. Additionally, farmers realize increased yields per unit area due to reduced production costs.
“With the advancement of science and technology such as Bt Cotton, opportunities now exist for rollout of interventions that can turn the cotton, textile and apparel sector around quickly.” In the Government’s Big Four Agenda, the Manufacturing pillar has identified back-ward and forward linkages with the agricultural sector through agro-processing and value addition as a critical success factor.
The CS said Kenya’s textile and apparel products have preferential market access to the United States of America under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade framework. “Additionally, Kenya has other attractive market access agreements with the European Union while the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) provide significant export opportunities for textile and apparel products,” Munya remarked.
He exuded confidence that commercial planting of Bt cotton demonstrates Kenya’s willingness and ability to harness the power of Science, Technology and Innovation, exploring solutions to the numerous challenges facing the agricultural sector.
Bt cotton adoption, and successful revitalization of the cotton, textile and apparel sector will make a significant contribution to the country’s socio-economic growth, improving livelihoods.
CS Munya’s speech during the launch.
For more information, contact Dr. Margaret Karembu on mkarembu@isaaa.org
