Kisii Governor, James Ongwae has expressed fear that continued land sub divisions by the area residents if unchecked threatens to plunge the County into food insecurity challenges.Governor Ongwae has challenged area residents to abandon the traditional culture of sub dividing land and sharing it out among their siblings,instead embrace new agricultural production technologies to maximize food production to avert food insecurity in the region.
Speaking at Agricultural Training Centre in Kisii Town during the annual Farmers Field Day hosted by ATC, Ongwae observed that land sub-division in Kisii region was uneconomical in terms of food production since the average farmer owns less than an acre of land.
"The traditional system of land ownership where fathers divide and share out land among their sons must cease as it is uneconomical in terms of food production, exposing the region to food insecurity due to poor food production practices,"stated Ongwae.
Though the region was climatically endowed with food production potential, Ongwae lamented that the practice of uneconomical land sub-divisions threatened food security situation in the region making available arable land unproductive through continued tilling on the same piece of land, leading to exhaustion of soil nutrients and fertility.
Ongwae observed that much of the available land in the region was over cultivated and required modern agricultural farming technologies to replenish the soil nutrients and fertility.
Ongwae's sentiments come amid widespread lack of information among area residents on the existence of the Agriculture Act(Chapter 318)Kenya,which states that agricultural land should not be sub-divided below 0.8hectares(1.97acres).