1. Conference Take-Aways for Policy Makers
Intercontinental Hotel,
14th September 2018

2. Advantages of Policy Support
Agricultural research has a ripple effect into many other areas including:
Manufacturing
Health
Field experimentation, getting credible data and analytics is very expensive and yet critical in informing decision making
A dynamic agriculture will create jobs in areas such as breeding and the use of micro-electronics
The agricultural revolution succeeded because policy makers, academia, farmers and researchers worked together in synergy

3. Need for Policy Support
To help build capacity to combat climate change and the resultant emerging issues
To address the wicked issues that include:
Inadequate funding for research
Soils and soil degradation even with Kenya having the best seed, knowledge and experience
Inadequate human resource
Inadequate infrastructure

4. Need for Policy Support
To provide alternatives to staple foods like maize
To make agricultural research attractive by develop schemes and incentives for scientists advance science
To create institutions that can lobby on behalf of research and scientists
To revise and modernize training agricultural curricula to integrate more technologies; include aspects of agribusiness and use of ICT in agriculture; and, make agriculture more attractive

5. Need for Policy Support
Policies should be evidence-informed as opposed to evidence –based, meaning that they should be informed by not only research but also by information from other factors and sectors
To include private sector in transformation and scaling up agriculture. Include private sector in areas including:
Seeds
Mechanization
Industrialization
infrastructure

6. Need for Policy Support
To create more farm managers – by bringing polytechnics and other tertiary level institutions back
To develop a strong food safety regulatory environment
To put in place initiatives that consolidate agricultural data into one platform which is more accessible
To enhance market access of agricultural produce so that farmers can be motivated to continue producing

7. Need for Policy Support
To enable developing the scientific base especially at the masters and PhD levels
To review the NARS and NARP policies to bring scientists together as originally envisaged; To re-structure agricultural research in Kenya. The operational nexus between universities-KALRO-MOA needs to be articulated in policy to bring out a seamless flow of ideas and research endeavors.
To enable long-term strategic research which is pro-active and not reactive (quick fix); To be patient to anticipates the problem, analyze it and give a solution

8. Need for Policy Support
To create agricultural research clusters in the whole country so as to enable looking at the country in totality and set out research priorities.