Access to Land in Kenya: Can Smallholders Farm Their Way Out of Poverty?

photo 4Speaker: Milu Muyanga
Topic: “Access to Land in Kenya: Can Smallholders Farm Their Way Out of Poverty?
Date: Thursday, October 24th, 2013
Time: 12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Place: Room 201 International Center

Dr. Muyanga joined the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State in May 2013 as an assistant professor focusing on international agricultural development. His research focuses on agricultural land and water issues, agricultural marketing policies and their impacts on poverty and inequality. Prior to his doctoral studies, Milu Muyanga worked as a Research Fellow with the Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development, Egerton University (Kenya), and prior to that was an Economist in the Ministry of Planning and National Development in the Government of Kenya. Dr. Muyanga received a first prize research medal in 2007 from the Global Development Network.

About the talk:

 Africa has witnessed a recent explosion in the number of indigenous “emergent” farmers. While foreign “land grabs” have captured international attention, perhaps a more serious threat to land access for the millions of smallholder farmers in the region is the transfer of land to a relatively wealthy class of “medium-scale” farmers through land markets and the political process. Using a survey conducted with a random sample of medium scale farmers in Kenya, this presentation explores the rise in medium-scale farming operations over the 1980-2010 period, their relative efficiency of production compared to small-scale farmers, the underlying interpretation of these findings about the priorities and motivations of governments, and the implications for prospects of broadly-based agricultural development strategies. Findings include the following: (i) The majority of medium-scale farmers, defined as using between 5-50 hectares for agricultural purposes, owned on average over two times more land than they were using for agriculture, implying a high degree of land owned for speculative purposes and/or an inability of farmers in this size category to make productive use of the land they owned; (ii) the majority of these farmers are either current or former public sector employees; and (iii) the majority of them acquired their land from savings from non-farm, largely urban jobs; only a minority were primarily engaged in agriculture prior to achieving medium-scale farming status. This study, therefore, suggests that individuals with economic and political capital conferred through public sector jobs have major advantages in navigating the land administration system to acquire land in Kenya.