From a distance, everything looked normal.

Driving through Kenya's North Rift, I saw what I had come to expect from the country's famous breadbasket, endless fields of maize stretching toward the horizon, their green stalks moving gently in the wind.

But the closer I got, the more that picture of abundance began to fall apart.

I had traveled through parts of Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzoia, spending time with farmers to understand what this season's maize harvest would look like.

What I found was deeply unsettling.

Behind the green fields were maize cobs that were small, poorly developed and, in some cases, almost completely empty.

For farmers who had spent months waiting for the harvest, the reality was painful: the maize had grown, but the grain had not.

When production in this region falls sharply, the effects can travel hundreds of kilometers. From farms in the Rift Valley to maize mills, markets and ultimately the kitchens of millions of Kenyan households. 

Kenya already consumes an estimated 70 million to 75 million 90-kilogram bags of maize every year.

Now, the government says the country could be facing a deficit of about 25 million bags. 

Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe says the government has already made arrangements to import maize to bridge the gap and prevent the country from running short of its staple food. But before the government began talking about imports, the warning signs were already visible here in the fields.

'I have nothing from my farm'

One of the farmers I met, Victor Kiprop, walked me through his maize field. At first glance, the plants looked like they were doing reasonably well. Then we began cutting the maize plants. He had decided to convert them into animal feeds.

"What happened here is about drought. The rain was not enough," Kiprop told me. For him, the consequences are not theoretical.

"I have nothing from my farm. It's a big loss in my pocket."

That sentence stayed with me. Because for farmers like Kiprop, this is not simply a bad agricultural statistic. It is money already spent on seed, fertilizer, labor, machinery and land, with little harvest to show for it. And it is income they may not recover.

The maize looked healthy, until you opened the cob

Perhaps the most disturbing part of my visit was how deceptive the fields looked. The maize plants had germinated. They had grown. From a moving car, some fields appeared almost normal. But the critical problem had occurred inside the plant.

A prolonged dry spell came at a crucial stage of development, when the maize needed sufficient moisture for the grain to form properly. Farmer Amos Kiptalam showed me one cob after another. The kernels were sparse. Others had almost nothing inside.

"In a good harvest it is normally three times this size," he explained. Then he peeled another one, which was almost empty.

"This is actually pathetic. This can be the best of our harvest," he said. 

The numbers tell part of the story

Kenya's maize production has already been under pressure. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), national maize production fell from 47.6 million 90-kilogram bags in 2023 to about 44.8 million bags in 2024. The latest drought-related losses could put further pressure on supplies.

For consumers, the concern is obvious. Less locally produced maize could mean tighter supplies. Tighter supplies can push up prices. And higher maize prices eventually find their way into the price of maize flour and other staple foods. The government says the imports are intended to prevent exactly that kind of shock.

The decision to import maize may provide immediate relief. But it also exposes a deeper weakness in Kenya's food system: too much of the country's food production still depends on the weather. 

CS Kagwe has acknowledged this, arguing that Kenya needs to move towards more irrigation-fed agriculture so that increasingly erratic climate conditions do not have such a devastating effect on food production.

What I saw in the North Rift left me with a difficult question.

If Kenya's breadbasket cannot reliably produce enough food because the rains have failed, where will the food come from?

For now, part of the answer is imports.

The government says it will bring in 25 million 90-kilogram bags of maize to cover the anticipated deficit. Recent reporting also shows Kenya has already been relying more heavily on imported food, with the country's food and beverage import bill reaching a record $626 million in the first quarter of 2026.

But imports are ultimately a short-term buffer. They do not make rain-fed agriculture more resilient. They do not compensate a farmer for a failed harvest. And they do not guarantee that the next season will be better. 

The bigger challenge for Kenya is therefore not simply finding enough maize this year. It is building a food system that can continue feeding the country even when the rains fail.