Saturday, 20th July 2024
Nairobi County Subsector of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources has embarked on the process of formulating the Nairobi City County Urban Agriculture and Food Security bill 2024, for the purpose of regulating agricultural activities in the county
The Food and Agriculture departmental heads were joined by a team from the county’s legal department and State department of Agriculture who together worked on the development of the legal document.
The draft bill seeks to promote, support and guide food and nutrition security through the development of urban agriculture within the City County.
The bill is set to amongst other things address issues of promotion of urban agriculture, food security, food safety, animal feed and agricultural inputs safety, traceability and agricultural & food waste management.
Green Nairobi County Executive Committee Member, Mr. Ibrahim Auma said that the legal framework in the making will set standards for urban agriculture and food safety for both today’s and future generations, where Nairobi will be benchmarked on setting the standards of a safer and climate resilient food system.
Speaking at the same meeting, Ms. Gladwell Cheruiyot, the County Chief Officer in charge of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources noted that the issue of food safety, which is one of the components of urban agriculture, should be thoroughly addressed in the legal document in order to ensure safe food for the people of Nairobi. “Nairobians deserve to have the assurance that the food they consume is of high quality, produced and processed through good agricultural practices.” Said Ms. Cheruiyot.
The three-day meeting held in Machakos was supported by the National Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (NAVCDP); a Government of Kenya and World Bank funded project implementing urban food systems pilot program with an objective to increase market participation and value chain development for targeted farmers in the select value chain in Nairobi.
Nairobi County’s NAVCDP Coordinator Mr. Joseph Kinyanjui added that the pilot project also aims to support urban and peri urban agriculture institutional and policy frameworks for a safer urban food system.
The County Director Food System and Sector Programmes Ms. Rose Randall stressed the need of coming up with laws that support food systems to ensure accessible, affordable, safe and nutritious food for the city residents. She also pointed out the need of the Subsector being strongly felt in the food market entry points as far as food safety matters are concerned.
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