GM Will Enslave Farmers And Intensify Hunger

Recurrent hunger has now become an annual ritual in Kenya, and thisis not fair to ourselves as a nation, for we have everything ittakes to be sustainably food secure.
This recurrent hunger is of our own making.
We are faced with a more profound problem than we are seeing here.As a nation, we have accepted the global notion that maize securityis synonymous with food security, and that when there is no maizethere is food insecurity. At the same time, the diversity ofindigenous food crops available in Kenyais under threat ofextinction because we have made up our minds that anythingindigenous is backward.
As farmers, we have space for planting maize and other exoticcrops. Tragically, we have little or no space for yams, arrowroots,sweet potatoes, cassava, pumpkins, millet, sorghum and a host ofother nutritious indigenous vegetables and fruits. These cropsdisappeared a long time ago from our small farms, where we plantmaize season in and season out.
As a country, we have failed to take advantage of localbiodiversity and the diversity of climatic conditions that supportit. We have allowed indigenous floral and fauna to disappear orreduce to near unviable populations as we clear the land for exoticand cash crop farming.
We are in addition faced with an even bigger problem - that ofclimate change. It is now evident that our country is warming upand seasons are no longer accurately predictable. Our small scalefarming system has been thrown into disarray as it rains when weare expecting a dry spell and vice versa. Farmers are continuallybeing caught unprepared by changing weather patterns.
What is worse, while some indigenous foods are known to be bridgingcrops that assure food security in times of adverse weather, we arenot planting these in sustainable quantities. Maize does not havethis capacity and quickly withers when subjected to a short periodof water stress.
OUR RIVER WATER VOLUMES ARE declining with astonishing rapidity,thanks to our equally astonishing zeal to deforest the very watercatchment areas that replenish our rivers, and a misguided passionto plant eucalyptus trees, which extract large quantities of waterfrom soils, leaving them dry. In the face of this threat, little ifanything is being done to respond to the visible impacts of climatechange. We are yet to link climate change to loss of biodiversityand loss of livelihoods.
Until we make this connection and take appropriate action, we willcontinue facing hunger and will continue begging for food everyother year.
Our soils are now dead after being fed with tonnes of chemicalfertilisers and sprays for decades. Our farming continues to bedominated by high-external input agriculture, but the farmers donot get enough returns from the same farms to buy these inputs. Ourfarmers rarely participate in setting prices for their producewhile inputs, including seeds, come with fixed prices. It is easyto create demand for farm inputs, but it's difficult to create ademand for farm produce. When it comes to farmers, the law ofsupply and demand applies to the letter.
This lopsided agri-business is worsening the hunger situation inKenya. Honestly, fertilisers and chemical sprays are not the answerto our food problems.