But then, those were ‘Children" of God and they lived thousands of years ago when such miracles were common place, both of these luxuries in short supply in our reality. In our world, alas, the cold truth is that we must either grow, tend and harvest food or else buy it from someone who did. So why then have we this preoccupation with all things holy and edible?  

In the Business Daily of May 27^th, I read a story to the effect that we are about to run out of food and that the Government is getting ready to import grain. The word out there is that the food shortage is due to a drought.

Without disputing that fact, it seems to me an odd translation of what is a grim shortage that is altogether easier explained. Reflecting a little on the events of January and February this year, we will recall that thousands of granaries were torched in the Rift Valley, complete with their contents. Farms of ripening maize suffered a similar fate. Worse still, the people, the arms and muscles that have traditionally tilled the farms, planted, weeded, harvested and turned the Rift Valley into the bread basket of Kenya are languishing in IDP camps as we wrangle over the legitimacy of their ownership of their holdings.

As an ordinary Kenyan with no expertise whatsoever in land law, I cannot express a view on the legitimacy of their titles or their right to live on those particular farms, or even how they came to own them. What I know though is that I need food, I and millions others need to eat. And as I do not own a farm, or access to the sort of miracle that could fill my plate, I need to have the supermarkets stocked with food at affordable prices.

Land is a resource and that like all resources, is worthless unutilised. Especially because the resurce in question here is one fulfillinf immediate needs, it is imperative that the Ministers of Land and Agriculture speedily recognize the fundamental needs of the people and provide farmers with access to land, land on which they may grow food to feed those of us who are not farmers and who are having to cope with extraordinarily high prices and contemplating a looming shortage.

We started by rcalling accounts from the Bible, but there are closer, starker lessons about. Let us learn from the Zimbabwean example. That country was once, like our Rift Valley, the food basket of Central Africa - that is, during the days when farmers were allowed access to farmland. When such access was denied, Zimbabwe lost that coveted position and its nationals now languish in hunger. The land went nowehere, many Zimbabweans continue to sit on hectare upon hectare of high quality farm land. But they are hungry and their emaciated nation suffers the ignominy of being unable to feed its citizens.

An old English adage admonishes against biting the hand that feeds. We'd do well to take heed. The August rains are coming, farm land will remain fallow, there'll be echoes in the empty silos, we will go hungry, the streets will be filled with rage and we will start looking to the skies and praying for miracles.