By Duncan Miriri
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya will import three million bags of maize in June to avert a looming food shortage caused by post-election ethnic violence that forced thousands of farmers to flee their farms, the agricultural minister said on Tuesday.
Violent mobs protesting against the re-election of President Mwai Kibaki in December destroyed some 3.5 million bags of maize in stores during violence in which some 1,200 people were killed, agriculture minister William Ruto told Reuters.
"The government has approved the importation of three million bags to take care of the gap that will exist between the stocks that we have and the harvest that we expect some time in October," Ruto said in an interview.
Last season's maize harvest was the biggest casualty after attackers in the agriculturally-rich Rift Valley province torched stores or destroyed crops on farms belonging to immigrant communities perceived to support the president.
Some 100,000 farmers fled and were unable to prepare their land for planting the staple for the current season, Ruto said.
Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga signed a deal in February creating a grand coalition government with Odinga as prime minister, stopping the violence.
The country now expects to harvest only 500,000 to 750,000 bags of maize in October, Ruto said, adding that normal cross-border trade with neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda would provide an extra one million bags.
S.AFRICA, BRAZIL SUPPLIES
The government is considering importing extra grain from Zambia, South Africa and Brazil.
Ruto said aftershocks of the political crisis were worsening a bad situation of rising food and farm costs.
Kenya would increase its strategic grain reserves from the current four million bags, or enough to cover six weeks of national needs, to eight million bags.
The government is also trying to lower fertiliser costs by increasing imports to 40 percent from the current 8 percent of the 200,000 tonnes required every crop season. Kenya buys fertilisers worth 9 billion shillings ($145 million) each year.
The agriculture ministry would also double its research budget to 1 percent of its total budget to develop high-yield seed varieties, he said.
AMNESTY
Ruto said that the grand coalition government would weather challenges such as the handling of those arrested for the post-election violence.
Some political leaders, mostly from the volatile Rift Valley region, want thousands of people arrested for the fighting freed but Justice Minister Martha Karua has said they would have to face the law.
"The grand coalition will hold," Ruto said adding that those arrested for the turmoil should be freed. "Since we have a compromise government, it should be a compromise all the way down."
He denied claims that he was involved in organising the violence in his Rift Valley homeland.
"How could one person defeat a whole government machinery?" he asked, adding that those who were then in government had failed in their duty to protect the country's citizens.
