Smallholder adoption and economic impacts of tissue culture banana in Kenya

This study was conducted with an objective of determining the correlates of adoption of tissue culture banana technology and its impacts on household incomes in Kenya. The results show that while some households have opted not to adopt tissue culture banana biotechnology, almost all the adopters are growing tissue culture bananas alongside non-tissue culture banana varieties. The scale of production and productivity of non-tissue banana varieties significantly exceeds that of tissue culture bananas. The cost of production of tissue culture bananas exceeds that of non-tissue varieties. Among the keydrivers of adoption include education level of the household head, land tenure and credit availability. Incomes of households that have adopted tissue culture banana biotechnology are not a significantly different from those of the non- adopters. The results generally indicate that smallholder farmers in Kenya are yet to realize the full potential of tissue culture banana biotechnology

Unpacking the ‘Emergent Farmer’ Concept in Agrarian Reform:Evidence from Livestock Farmers in South Africa

South Africa has historically perpetuated a dual system of freehold commercial and communal subsistence farming. To bridge these extremes, agrarian reform policies have encouraged the creation of a class of ‘emergent’, commercially oriented farmers. However, these policies consider ‘emergent’ farmers as a homogeneous group of land reform beneficiaries, with limited appreciation of the class differences between them, and do little to support the rise of a ‘middle’ group of producers able to bridge that gap. This article uses a case study of livestock farmers in Eastern Cape Province to critique the ‘emergent farmer’ concept. The authors identify three broad categories of farmers within the emergent livestock sector: a large group who, despite having accessed private farms, remain effectively subsistence farmers; a smaller group of small/medium-scale commercial producers who have communal farming origins and most closely approximate to ‘emergent’ farmers; and an elite group of large-scale, fully commercialized farmers, whose emergence has been facilitated primarily by access to capital and a desire to invest in alternative business ventures. On this basis the authors suggest that current agrarian reform policies need considerable refocusing if they are to effectively facilitate the emergence of a ‘middle’ group of smallholder commercial farmers from communal systems

Africa's changing farm size distribution patterns : the rise of medium-scale farms

This study assesses changes over the past decade in the farm size distributions of Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, drawing on two or more waves of nationally representative population-based and/or area-based surveys. Analysis indicates that much of Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing major changes in farm land ownership patterns. Among all farms below 100 hectares in size, the share of land on small-scale holdings under five hectares has declined except in Kenya. Medium-scale farms (defined here as farm holdings between 5 and 100 hectares) account for a rising share of total farmland, especially in the 10–100 hectare range where the number of these farms is growing especially rapidly. Medium-scale farms control roughly 20% of total farmland in Kenya, 32% in Ghana, 39% in Tanzania, and over 50% in Zambia. The numbers of such farms are also growing very rapidly, except in Kenya. We also conducted detailed life history surveys of medium-scale farmers in each of these four countries and found that the rapid rise of medium-scale holdings in most cases reflects increased interest in land by urban-based professionals or influential rural people. About half of these farmers obtained their land later in life, financed by nonfarm income. The rise of medium-scale farms is affecting the region in diverse ways that are difficult to generalize. Many such farms are a source of dynamism, technical change, and commercialization of African agriculture. However, medium-scale land acquisitions may exacerbate land scarcity in rural areas and constrain the rate of growth in the number of small-scale farm holdings. Medium-scale farmers tend to dominate farm lobby groups and influence agricultural policies and public expenditures to agriculture in their favor. Nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from six countries (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia) show that urban households own 5–35% of total agricultural land and that this share is rising in all countries where DHS surveys were repeated. This suggests a new and hitherto unrecognized channel by which medium-scale farmers may be altering the strength and location of agricultural growth and employment multipliers between rural and urban areas. Given current trends, medium-scale farms are likely to soon become the dominant scale of farming in many African countries.This study was presented at the 29th Triennial International Conference of Agricultural Economists, August 13, 2015, Milan, Italy.The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Guiding Investments in Sustainable Agricultural Intensification in Africa (GISAIA) grant at Michigan State University, and from the Food Security Policy Innovation Lab, funded by USAID's Bureau for Food Security.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1574-08622018-11-30Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Developmen

Insights to rural household food insecurity in Kenya

No Abstract

Insights to rural household food insecurity in Kenya

No Abstract

The role of large traders in driving sustainable agricultural intensification in smallholder farms: Evidence from Kenya

Pervasive threats of climate change and land degradation have compounded the inherent low farm productivity problem in sub-Saharan Africa. Though sustainable agricultural intensification practices have been shown to improve the resilience of farm production in the face of these emerging threats, they suffer low adoption rates typical of any technology adoption in these regions. Recent evidence points to an emergence of large traders in smallholder grain markets of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Given their big financial and operational capacities, the hypothesis is that they can drive the elusive transformation in agri-food systems by enhancing sustainable production and marketing for smallholder farmers. This study tests this hypothesis using a decade-long large-panel dataset from Kenya. A dynamic random effects Probit model and a control function approach are used to evaluate the dynamism in adopting sustainable agricultural inputs and the effect of large grain traders in enhancing the adoption of these inputs at the farm level. Results indicate that sales to large grain traders lead to higher adoption of inorganic fertilizer and improved seed, key agricultural intensification inputs. Land ownership is also shown to be a key success factor for entry into large-grain-trader markets. Lastly, the adoption of improved seed and organic manure is persistent across time, indicating state dependence in using these inputs. These results suggest that strategies to foster engagements between large grain traders and farmers can enhance the uptake of sustainable intensification inputs. Such strategies should be accompanied by efforts to improve access to these markets by resource-poor farmers who are primarily smallholders

Land access and outmigration in densely populated areas of rural Kenya Land access and outmigration in densely populated areas of rural Kenya

One of the key drivers of youth migration of inequitable distribution of land which denies them access to work environment. Youths hold limited small land sizes even when they migrate and this limits there involvement in agriculture. Majority of the rural youths have low education levels and professional skills which hindered their ability to access decent jobs. The results of the hypothesis test revealed that there is relationship between the ages of migrants and their reasons for migration to the cities while migrant’s marital status was not significantly related to their reasons for migrating motives. This study recommends that the government and non-governmental organizations should endeavour to establish skill acquisition in the devolved counties in Kenya centres in the rural areas to stem the rate of rural-urban migratio

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy in black patients at Ga-Rankuwa hospital: a feasibility study

No Abstract. Central African Journal of Medicine Vol. 45 (7) 1999: pp. 176-17

Decolonising Musicology: A Response and Three Positions

No Abstrac