President William Ruto on Wednesday announced the rollout of the second phase of the government’s fertiliser subsidy program promising further lowering of fertiliser prices.

The President pledged that the price of fertiliser will be brought down further from Sh3,500 to Sh2,500 per 50kg bag in a bid to boost update and agricultural production by farmers.

Ruto appealed to farmers across the country to take advantage of the further lowering of fertiliser prices to boost production in their farms in the coming planting seasons.

“Since fertiliser is the game-changer of agricultural productivity, this should translate to higher production in the next planting season,” Ruto said during a briefing at State House, Nairobi.

During its previous intervention in the last planting season, the Ruto administration slashed the prices of a 50kg bag of fertiliser from Sh7,000 to Sh3,500 to lower cost of production amid logistical and access challenges.

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At the time, the Head of State intimated that his administration would focus on lowering the cost of food production as opposed to subsidising the prices of food like his predecessor did.

As he outlined his government’s interventions to boost agriculture, Ruto urged farmers to intensify their uptake of fertiliser per acre of their farmland to grow their production.

“Data shows that if you double the fertiliser per acre, you’ll get more yield of between 12 and 25 bags of maize,” said the president.

The Kenya Kwanza Government is targeting to deliver 100,000 tonnes (2 million 50kg bags) of subsidised fertiliser to farmers in the country’s bread baskets before short rains start.

Ruto says Kenya is aiming to produce 61 million bags of maize each year from this season until 2027 saying the long rains normally yield 80 per cent of the country’s total production.

“From the long rain season alone, an estimated yield of 44 million bags is expected compared to last year’s 32 million bags.

“As a result of effectively administered strategic interventions, we are definitely on course to meet national demand in full this year.”

This comes as the government increased its budget to the Agriculture Finance Corporation (AFC) from Sh2 billion to Sh10 billion to facilitate access to affordable loans to farmers.

“Through their hard work and the interventions we have made through the fertiliser subsidy programme, farmers have expanded production by an extra 200,000 acres compared to last year,” added Ruto as he thanked farmers for increasing production promising his support.