Farmers party’s farming vision: why Busia Could Become a Testing Ground for a New Agricultural Politics

For generations, farming has been the quiet engine of rural kenya. Long before political rallies, campaign slogans and development promises, millions of kenyan families were already producing food, raising livestock, selling produce and keeping the country fed.

Yet for many smallholder farmers, the story has often remained painfully familiar: produce leaves the farm cheaply, passes through several hands and reaches consumers at a considerably higher price, while the farmer who carried the greatest production risk receives only a fraction of the final value.

It is against this background that the farmers party has positioned agriculture at the centre of its political philosophy.

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The party describes its vision as a democratic and prosperous kenya where citizens participate freely, the environment is protected and farmers thrive. Its mission is to promote sustainable farming and social development through inclusive and accountable governance.

The philosophy goes beyond simply encouraging kenyans to plant more crops. It seeks to change the relationship between the farmer, technology, markets, finance, cooperatives and government. And in busia county, the party leadership says it wants to turn that philosophy into a practical grassroots programme.

From subsistence to commercial farming

Farmers party's approach rests on a simple proposition: farming should not merely be an activity for survival; it should become a commercially viable enterprise.

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The party's published priorities include food security and farmer income, modern agriculture, climate-smart farming, affordable finance, insurance, fair markets and support for rural industries. This means encouraging farmers to think beyond the traditional cycle of planting, harvesting and selling whatever is available immediately after harvest. Instead, farmers would be encouraged to understand their farms as businesses.

That requires better production planning, improved seeds and breeds, appropriate technology, soil management, irrigation where feasible, pest and disease control, post-harvest management, aggregation, processing and organised marketing.

Kenya's agricultural policy similarly identifies the transformation of agriculture from subsistence production into commercially oriented enterprises as a central objective, while emphasizing modern technology, fair trading practices and sustainable use of agricultural resources.

The farmers party's philosophy therefore places the farmer at the centre of the agricultural value chain.

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Technology as the new farming tool

In Busia, farmers party county chairman and coordinator Xavier Lugaga says one of the priorities is to encourage farmers to embrace modern farming methods.

For lugaga, modern agriculture should not be confused with abandoning traditional knowledge.

Rather, he argues that farmers can combine indigenous experience with scientific knowledge and appropriate technology to increase productivity and reduce losses.

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The approach includes greater use of improved planting materials, modern agronomic practices, climate-smart agriculture, mechanisation where economically practical and better access to agricultural information.

The party itself identifies conservation agriculture, agroforestry and resilient varieties among its climate-smart priorities. This is particularly important as farmers confront unpredictable weather, changing rainfall patterns, pests, diseases and rising production costs.

A farmer who plants without reliable information about weather, markets, soil conditions or disease risks can easily spend an entire season producing a crop that ultimately generates little income. The proposed shift is therefore from farming by routine to farming using information.

The cooperative idea

But the farmers party's agricultural strategy does not end at the farm gate. Its busia leadership sees cooperative organisation as an important mechanism for solving one of the biggest problems confronting smallholder farmers: weak bargaining power.

A single farmer arriving at the market with a few bags of maize, sacks of cassava, bananas, vegetables or other produce may have little influence over the price.

Thousands of organised farmers selling collectively present an entirely different proposition.

Through cooperatives, farmers can aggregate their produce, negotiate with buyers, access services and potentially explore storage, processing and value addition.

The cooperative model can also help farmers move from simply selling raw commodities towards participating in more profitable sections of the value chain.

This philosophy is consistent with kenya's wider agricultural policy framework, which recognizes cooperative development, production and marketing, value addition and access to credit and insurance as important components of agricultural development.

For busia, where agriculture remains an important part of rural livelihoods, lugaga argues that organised farmers could have greater economic leverage than isolated producers.

The objective, he says, should be to make the farmer an active participant in determining how produce is marketed rather than a passive price-taker.

Busia as an agricultural frontier

The farmers party's focus on busia comes at a time when agriculture is increasingly being discussed not simply as a food-security issue but as an economic-development question.

The county has diverse agricultural activities involving crops, livestock and other rural enterprises. The challenge is how to convert that productive potential into reliable household income. According to lugaga, the answer requires a combination of production, organisation and markets.

Farmers must produce enough. They must produce quality products. They must reduce post-harvest losses. And, critically, they must know where and how their products will be sold.

This means agricultural development cannot be separated from roads, storage facilities, irrigation, extension services, electricity, finance, processing and access to markets. The farmers party's national platform similarly identifies rural infrastructure, farmer finance, fair markets, value addition and support for rural industries among its priorities.

Youth and women in agriculture

Another component of the party's philosophy is the attempt to make agriculture more attractive to young people. For decades, farming has sometimes been portrayed as an occupation people enter only when other opportunities fail.

The farmers party presents a different proposition: agriculture can be a modern enterprise involving technology, finance, logistics, processing, marketing and entrepreneurship.

Its published policy platform specifically identifies skills, capital and modern agriculture as mechanisms for creating opportunities for young people, while also calling for greater access to skills, markets, finance and leadership opportunities for women and youth in agriculture.

That approach could potentially create opportunities beyond the farm itself.

A modern agricultural economy requires tractor operators, agronomists, veterinary professionals, transporters, aggregators, warehouse managers, processors, digital marketers, financial-service providers and traders. In that sense, the farm becomes the beginning of an economic chain rather than its endpoint.

Farmer finance

The party also identifies access to affordable capital and agricultural insurance as part of its farmer-finance philosophy.

This addresses another longstanding challenge: farmers often require money before they earn money. Seeds, fertiliser, labour, machinery, veterinary services and transport all require expenditure before harvest.

The farmers party says farmers need affordable capital and protection against agricultural risks so that they can invest and grow their enterprises. For busia farmers, the practical question will be whether such broad policy objectives can eventually be translated into accessible financial products, stronger farmer organisations and functioning market arrangements.

The politics of agriculture

Lugaga says the farmers party wants agriculture to become a central issue in political discussion rather than an occasional subject raised during election campaigns.

His argument is that political leadership and agricultural development are closely connected If farmers are to increase production, they require functioning institutions. If they are to sell profitably, they require markets. If they are to adopt modern technology, they require knowledge and capital.

If they are to form successful cooperatives, they require accountable management and strong governance.

The party therefore links agricultural transformation with its broader emphasis on accountable and transparent leadership. Its official platform identifies good governance as a foundation for progress and places accountability and community empowerment among its core themes.

Lugaga's message to Busia

Against this background, lugaga has been urging residents of busia county to consider joining the farmers party in large numbers and to participate in its grassroots structures.

He says greater membership would give the party's aspirants a stronger organisational base as the country moves towards the august 10, 2027 general election. The office of the registrar of political parties has identified august 10, 2027 as the date for kenya's next general election.

Lugaga's message is framed around participation: that residents should register, understand the party's policies, organise themselves and participate in determining the leadership choices presented to voters.

He says the party wants farmers, young people, women, traders, professionals and other residents to participate in its political structures.

The farmers party's own membership policy states that membership is open to eligible kenyans and supporters who subscribe to its values and commit to its constitution. The party also says membership is not restricted to farmers.

For lugaga, this distinction is important.A farmers party government agenda, he argues, would not be intended only for people who own large farms.

It would also address people whose livelihoods depend indirectly on agriculture—from farm workers and traders to transporters, processors and small rural enterprises.

From farm to market

The central question is ultimately whether farmers can capture a larger share of the value generated by their own work. That is where the cooperative strategy becomes particularly significant. A farmer who sells individually may have little influence.

A farmer who belongs to a well-managed cooperative can potentially participate in aggregation, collective marketing, storage, processing and negotiations with buyers.

The difference is organisational power. But cooperatives themselves require discipline. They need transparent leadership, proper records, professional management, regular audits and members who understand their rights and responsibilities.

Without those safeguards, cooperative societies can become vulnerable to mismanagement. The farmers party's agricultural philosophy therefore implicitly places as much emphasis on governance as it does on production.

A new agricultural contract

The broader vision is of an agricultural economy in which the farmer is not merely a producer of raw materials.

The farmer becomes an entrepreneur. The cooperative becomes a vehicle for collective economic power. Technology becomes a production tool. Markets become part of the production decision. Value addition becomes a pathway to higher returns.

And political leadership becomes accountable for creating an environment in which those activities can flourish. That is the agricultural philosophy farmers party leadership is seeking to advance in Busia. For Lugaga, the challenge is now to translate the philosophy into grassroots organisation and practical programmes that farmers can understand and participate in.

His appeal for registration is therefore tied to the party's larger political strategy: building membership structures before the next election while placing agriculture at the centre of its message. Whether that approach will translate into electoral support will ultimately be determined by busia voters.

For now, the farmers party is attempting to make one argument unmistakable: the farmer should not remain at the bottom of the agricultural value chain after producing the wealth that sustains it.

Its proposed answer is a combination of modern farming, organised cooperatives, stronger markets, finance, technology, value addition and accountable leadership.And in Busia, Lugaga says, that conversation has already begun.