A section of farmers from Moiben and Soy constituencies in Uasin Gishu County is mulling a possibility of their cooperative societies merging into one mega entity in readiness to set up a maize milling plant.
Members from three cooperatives in the two constituencies on Thursday held a meeting at Kabenes to deliberate on a merger to form a larger MoiSoi Maize Milling plant.
Speaking during the meeting, Uasin Gishu governor Jackson Mandago said his administration stands with farmers in formulating and crafting ways to realize both a paradigm shift in economic growth and transformation of livelihoods of its constituents.
Mandago said his government has a big intent to set up ways of bettering farmers' lives and attaining positive changes in livelihoods at the end of the day.
"My Government has always had plans to work with farmers in establishing paths for success. This is the reason why we have allocated huge sums of funds to loan out to farmers' cooperatives so they can establish such projects as maize millers," said Mandago.
"...and the plan we have now is to sensitize cooperatives to merge so they can establish bigger projects," he added.
The maize miller will be owned and managed by the cooperative(s), a move the county boss who was recently appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta into a maize crisis taskforce, a move he says will solve issues that farmers have had with the sale of maize and imports from neighbouring countries.
Senator Prof. Margaret Kamar who also attended the meeting said: "Establishment of a maize miller will ensure that farmers get to control maize prices."
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