Kenya’s High Court has ruled that the sale of substandard fertiliser to farmers under the government’s National Fertiliser Subsidy Programme breached their constitutional rights, in a judgment delivered on 6 October 2026 that upholds a petition brought by the Law Society of Kenya.
The case centred on NPK 10:26:10 fertiliser sold under the brand name Kelgreen during the 2024 long-rains season. The court found the product did not match its declared composition or the national standard, KS EAS 912:2019, and noted written confirmation that the entire consignment was unfit for distribution. Complaints from farmers and the media began around 18 March 2024, prompting the suspension of distribution; the Kenya Bureau of Standards later suspended the manufacturer’s standardisation mark. The National Cereals and Produce Board, named as the fourth respondent, had sold the fertiliser to farmers.
The court also found that the agriculture cabinet secretary’s failure to constitute the Fertiliser and Animal Foodstuffs Board of Kenya was unlawful, breaching constitutional provisions on good governance and the rule of law. The board should have existed under the Fertilisers and Animal Foodstuffs Act, and its absence, the judges found, left farmers without a regulator that should have been checking fertiliser quality before the Kelgreen consignment ever reached them.
The judges rejected arguments that the court lacked jurisdiction because criminal proceedings over the scandal were already under way, holding that a criminal case does not relieve the state of its separate constitutional obligations. The executive remains bound by the law regardless of how a parallel prosecution unfolds, they found, and the National Cereals and Produce Board’s duty to supply fertiliser of reasonable quality does not depend on first establishing who introduced the defect or proving criminal intent.
Farmers can still seek damages
The judges declined to order compensation, since the farmers on whose behalf it was sought were not individually identified and their losses were neither proved nor quantified; the National Cereals and Produce Board said affected farmers had already received replacement or top-dressing fertiliser. Farmers with unmet losses may still bring individual claims. The court also declined to halt the subsidy programme itself or to direct prosecutors to widen a separate criminal case, Kiambu Chief Magistrate’s Court Criminal Case No. E1240 of 2024, saying that decision rests with the Director of Public Prosecutions. It stressed the judgment makes no finding of guilt or innocence in that case.
Faith Odhiambo, who led the Law Society of Kenya as president when the case was filed, welcomed the ruling as a victory for the rule of law, citing Article 46 of the constitution on consumer protection. “The judgment draws a firm line against government by convenience,” she said. She urged the government to meet its statutory obligations without further delay, and called on farmers who suffered losses to pursue properly documented individual claims.
The ruling leaves Kenya’s fertiliser subsidy programme in place but under sharper legal scrutiny, with the still-unformed regulatory board now a matter of constitutional as well as administrative obligation. For farmers who planted Kelgreen on the government’s own recommendation only to see a failed season, the court’s reasoning offers a route to compensation, even if no cheque follows automatically from this judgment; the court was explicit that nothing in its ruling limits prosecutors or regulators from acting further as more evidence emerges from the Kiambu case.
The case has run since 2024, when complaints first surfaced that fertiliser distributed under the long-rains subsidy programme was substandard or outright counterfeit, triggering KEBS’s suspension of the manufacturer’s standardisation mark and a parliamentary probe into how the batch passed pre-authorisation checks at all. Its reach beyond Kenya is notable: subsidised-input scandals have weakened farmer trust in state-backed schemes elsewhere in the region, making this judgment a reference point for how courts might treat similar disputes over seed and fertiliser quality. In neighbouring Uganda, an opposition leader has issued his own warning over drought and rising fuel costs threatening food security.
