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Kenya: Food Security - Harsh Lessons From NEP
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The East African Standard (Nairobi)
21 March 2008
Posted to the web 21 March 2008
Boniface Ongeri
Nairobi
At a time when the country faces sporadic food insecurity, the creation of some administrative boundaries escaped scrutiny.
The vicious cycle that replays itself in northern Kenya is all too familiar. Tens of thousands of people and animals stare at starvation every year.
Noble Peace laureate, Prof Wangari Maathai, once said that if nature is abused, it has a way of paying back.
"The root cause of tragedy lies with the people and the way they have (ab)used land over the decades," she said.
The recurring droughts are consequences of largely political and economic problems. Today, many residents are paying heavily for blunders of the past.
The tragedy that unfolds in the country replicates what happens in the pastoral regions of northern Kenya.
Until 1985, Wajir West constituency had seven centres: Hadado, Eldas, Giriftu, Wagalla, Ganyure, Arbajahan and Elnoor, Mr Mohammed Noor, 57, recalls. The centres were approximately 50km apart.
"The land in between comprised pasture and man-made water catchments that collected rain water for our animals," Noor said, as he sipped tea under an acacia tree at Eldas, 150km from Wajir town.
In unrevised history maps, the areas were clearly indicated as grazing zones.
"Traditional laws did not allow pastoralists to settle on grazing sites because pasture would be depleted. The rule was to graze during the day and move to the centres for the night," Noor says.
A pastoralist with his animals in Ngaragu in North-Eastern Province. Picture by Martin Mukangu
Noor, however, is at a loss why the traditional mechanisms that played a crucial role in conserving the environment to ensure that pasture was available all seasons were discarded.
"The pastoralists used to practise rotational grazing and by the time they returned to the first pasture, grass had sprouted for the livestock to graze on," he said.
Wajir District National Environmental Management Authority Officer, Mr Abdikadir Sheikh, says that a population explosion contributed to the dwindling pastures.
In the late 1980s, some regions were elevated into locations, divisions and districts. Many villagers felt honoured that their villages were among the beneficiaries.
From Ijara to Mandera, Moyale to Samburu, grazing sites were quietly gazetted into settlements. At the turn of the 1990s, settlements were literally sitting on what had been rich pasture.
Once these were established, there was wanton destruction of vegetation cover to provide shelter and fuel for the pastoralists.
In a region where rearing of livestock is the economic mainstay, this turn of events spelt doom for the populace.
Dry periods are not a recent phenomenon. Men like Noor, who belong to the older generation, recall long spells of drought. The only difference is that livestock had plenty to eat in the grazing sites.
The soil here can be as dry as ash. It needs solid management skills like the ones shown by the older generation in keeping settlements out off grazing zones.
Furthermore, the residents are born pastoralists. Few have embraced farming as an alternative to their now threatened way of life.
Two-thirds of the province is semi-arid. About 15 per cent is viable for farming, but with below average rainfall, many people opt to stick to pastoralism. For those who practise small scale farming and plant drought resistant crops like sorghum and millet, the weather can still be overwhelming even to the hardiest of crops.
The land is better suited for grazing livestock, but with the loss of grazing zones, it becomes easy to overgraze.
When the sparse vegetation is made even sparser, the topsoil is blown away. Soil erosion on arid and semi-arid land is worse than that in fertile zones.
The going has been getting tougher and some residents have given up nomadic life altogether, opting instead for a sedentary life in urban centres.
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They survive by cutting and burning trees for fuel. Those who farm lack tools or the experience. Others troop to relief food distribution centres for handouts.
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