Kenya wants to adopt hybrid rice tech

MANILA, Philippines - An official of a rice firm in Kenya was in Manila over the weekend to negotiate with SL Agritech Corp. to adopt the latter’s hybrid rice technology.

John Kimingi, director of Hyrice Co. in Kenya, met with Henry Lim, chairman and CEO of SL Agritech, to express his desire to utilize its hybrid rice technology.

“According to Mr. Kimingi, he has long been contacting, through the Internet, rice producers from Brazil, India, Thailand and the Philippines and what attracted him most, he said, was the hybrid seeds produced by our firm which is the SL-8H variety.”

During Kimingi’s week-long stay here, Lim toured him to a hybrid rice production site of SL Agritech in Nueva Ecija where the Kenyan rice businessman saw for himself thousands of hectares of the soon-to-be harvested hybrid rice.

“Mr. Kimingi was, shall I say, so impressed with what he saw, as we briefed him on our hybrid rice production technology,” Lim said, adding that “Mr. Kimingi had promised to be back in Manila soon to formalize his firm’s intention to adopt our production process.”

Other countries presently adopting SL Agritech’s hybrid rice technology are Cambodia, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Vietnam where the Philippines has been importing billions of pesos worth of rice since 1987.

Nigeria, which is considered the most populated country in Africa with over 150 million people, is also using SL Agritech’s hybrid rice technology.

Lim said that most of Kenya’s rice fields are planted with inbred rice.

“Hybrid rice seeds has not been introduced in Kenya where rice is the third most important staple food, after maize (corn) and wheat,” he said.

Kenya ’s economy largely depends on the agricultural sector. About 75 percent of Kenyans owe their livelihood to agriculture. Other than agri-production, the sector boasts of comparatively wide range of manufacturing industries, with food processing being the largest single activity.