Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has said Kenya’s ambition to become a leading exporter of quality meat will largely depend on the success of livestock farmers and pastoralists, describing them as the backbone of the country’s livestock industry.
In a statement shared on Wednesday, Kagwe said the government’s strategy to grow the meat export sector begins at the farm level, noting that no export market can thrive without farmers producing healthy and quality livestock.
“Without our livestock farmers and pastoralists, there is no meat industry, no value chain, and no export market,” the CS said.
Kagwe noted that the livestock sector has become one of Kenya’s most important economic pillars, generating billions of shillings annually, supporting millions of livelihoods and playing a critical role in the country’s food security.
He added that increasing demand for Kenyan meat in international markets demonstrates the country’s potential to become a major player in the global meat trade.
According to the CS, the government’s priority is to strengthen every stage of the livestock value chain to ensure farmers benefit more from the sector while increasing Kenya’s competitiveness in export markets.
One of the important areas where improvements are necessary, he said, include developing animal identification and tracing systems, developing better animal health services, developing value adding initiatives, and exploring new international markets for meat produced in Kenya.
According to him, such improvements are likely to contribute towards improvement in the quality of livestock products and earning higher incomes through sale of livestock products.
Kagwe noted that development of the livestock sector would only be possible when producers have appropriate means of doing business and that is why supporting farmers is an important part of the strategy of the government.
“When farmers do well, the whole value chain improves and Kenya earns more from its livestock sector,” he said.
He expressed his optimism that Kenya has adequate livestock resources, production capacity and market opportunities to become one of the major players in provision of premium meat in Africa.
For now, the next step of Kenya will be to extract maximum value out of the livestock sector through improved production and marketing of livestock products to international markets.
Such comments came in the context of the efforts made by the government towards promoting value addition and diversification of export sources in order to increase access to high-value global markets for livestock and livestock products.