Top among the reasons is poor rains being experienced in the country and a possibility of a looming drought ,post election violence in high producing  areas of rift valley, high prices of animal  feed and emergence of diseases caused by lack of personnel.

The situation is also likely to impact locally where prices of dairy products are expected to rise owing to the a drop in production.

The situation spells doom for an industry that has seen dramatic growth since 2004, when production increased tenfold with he revival of state owned giant milk processor Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC).

Industry sources say that production is expected to fall this year to 5.1 billion litres a huge drp compared to the last year production figures of 5.7 billion litres.

In the north rift valley thousands of farmers were displaced by the post poll violence , losing their animals as well, leading to drop of more than 40%.

While many are now going back to their farms, they have lost livestock to raiders who evicted them , meaning that they would be unable to resume production.

 But the things are even gloomier in highlands of central Kenya where weather experts have predicted a major drop in rainfall levels that may border on drought.

Already rains have stopped after briefly being experienced in April's first 2 weeks. This is translating into less feed fodder for stocks and a certain drop in production.

Alternatively prices of  processed supplements used to feed animals to boost productions have shot up by more than 50% over the past 3 months  making it unaffordable for many farmers and uneconomical to use.

Incidents of livestock diseases have also been reported across Kenya  a situation that is now blamed on poor monitoring of outbreaks  owing to a shortage of field  staff.

As a result diseases such as foot and mouth, rinderpest and Nagana  have become common place  taking a heavy toll on dairy animals. The government have not hired staff since 1996, meaning that those who retired over the past 12 years have not been replaced.

Overall the situation is that farmers are only producing for local consumption with less and milk reaching factories for processing.

This has industry players worried with KCC which had bagged the export orders valued at Ksh 1 billion annually already seeing red .

"Once we lose these orders they will go to other countries, and getting them back will be difficult even after our production levels go back to normal " said KCC chairman Matu Wamae.

"This is indeed sad since the our market will see Kenya as an unreliable source that did not deserve he orders in the first place" he added.

The country commenced the exports only last year when production exceed local consumption for the first time in history.

Orders streamed in from Yemen , Malawi, Mozambique , Egypt and Tanzania with KCc ably meeting the quotas satisfactorily.

Seeing that all is now well , the company is now advocating increased production per holder area where farmers are being taught new techniques to boos production twofold.

This include zero grazing as opposed to grazing in paddocks that consume large parcels of land supporting fewer cattle .

Keywords:  kenya business society