Cape Town — Kenya needs to build a new food policy into its constitution reform process that recognises that ethnicity and economics play a major factor in food (in)security in that country.

International media coverage of famine-stricken African countries has consistently focused on malnourished children and concomitant international food aid. But what about food security from an African perspective?

In Africa, explanations of access to food are normally found within a complicated nexus of cultural, social, political and economic factors.

It is important to look at why some communities are inherently susceptible to food insecurity than others.

In Kenya, communities living in the North Eastern and Eastern parts of the country are more likely to be food insecure than their counterparts in the Central parts or the Rift Valley. While varied topographies of the regions may be a convenient explanation for skewed food sufficiency, underlying reasons such as asymmetries in the implementation of the national food policy in a highly interwoven liberalised global system of food economics may provide pertinent explanations to food insufficiency in Kenya.

Government interventions were hampered by the 1980s global reforms in economic policies aimed at liberalisation of the market, especially in developing countries. The premise for liberalisation was the halting of the state's role in public development and substituting it with free market operations. In 1986, the Kenyan government approved reforms in the agricultural sector which emphasised the liberalisation of the grain market, removal of price control on all agricultural commodities, decontrol and relaxation of fertiliser import licensing systems and price decontrol and removal of obstacles to the marketing and distribution network.

The post-liberation period has seen a dramatic turn in basic food practices. Farmers now view marketing boards as 'sellers of last resort' due to poor product prices while collective farming which was once a communal safety net for food and income has been reduced to individualistic and competitive private farming. The once beneficial government credit for inputs and fertilisers have ceased, leaving the farmer at the mercy of private financial firms which demand huge collateral for loans. Also unlike before when public institutions dominated the trade for food, private institutions have now sprung up and command a huge stake in trade and distribution on commodities such as rice, sugar and maize thus creating price fluctuations on the domestic market. Small scale farmers have been slowly phased out by large commercial farmers since they can influence debate and policy towards agriculture import and export controls. While it's not bad news for all farmers, it is for mainly small scale farmers who relied on the government for price protection and resource help to complement their food security programmes.

Food Security Variables on Individual Districts

In Kenya how farming communities are formed has its roots in colonial vestiges whereby some ethnic communities such as the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin who once used to till European farms in the Kenyan Rift Valley have remained dominant in farming. A system of cheap manual labour was inculcated into the farming system and by the mid 1920s almost all European farms in the Kenya Rift Valley were growing cash crops which were being farmed by able-bodied men from the Kikuyu tribe. Until independence and some time after that, the transition from colonial to neo-colonial farming took into consideration the general fabric of commercial cheap labour farming and made concessions whereby the British way of farming would continue but under a new regime: the Africans.

Since agriculture was the lynchpin of the economy the state apparatus, namely the newly created farmers organisations and cooperation's, were bound to 'save' the economy and thus encouraged the maintenance of the cash crop economy in the Kenyan Rift Valley through government levies and subsides while biasing against semi-arid areas and subsistence crops. In post independence Kenya this trend in farming continued until recently.

The Rift Valley, also known as the 'highlands of Kenya', is very fertile and conducive to commercial faring due to large expansive tracts of land. The farming communities in the Rift Valley are dominated by wealthy Kikuyus, Kalenjin politicians and athletes who tend to focus on commercial crops such as maize, millet and barley. The indigenous tribe which originally occupied that Rift Valley were the Masai. However, due to the advent of commercial farming they have eventually been pushed to the fringes of the fertile lands and have settled into a pastoralist and subsistence farming way of life.

During drought periods in the Rift Valley in the years 2000-2001, well off communities (Kikuyu and Kalenjin) tended to ameliorate the effects of hunger by using their disposable income to buy imports of food. But for less wealthy communities such as the Masai, the only way they could mitigate the effects of hunger was by selling off community cattle which is considered sacrosanct and cannot be sold under any circumstance thus eventually perpetuating community food insecurity.

Eastern and North Eastern provinces of Kenya can be viewed as typical examples of the way food security discourses in Kenya have regularly omitted correlative variables such as ethnicity and economics within the thesis. Both districts are semi arid and are sparsely populated. In the Eastern province, the community that faces the most food insecurity threat is the Kamba. They tend to concentrate on farming maize and beans which are considered economically viable. Maize that Kambas farm is called Katumani and is made available by the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute. This kind of maize is much smaller and sturdier than the 'normal' maize and thus has lower market value. Although the district also has vast tracts of land its semi arid geographical nature makes it's less conducive for crop production. The Kambas mitigate famine by selling off their Katumani maize to middle-men at depressed market prices to generate disposal income which is normally not enough to feed a communal homestead.

In the North Eastern province, Karamojongs and Pokots usually face the most threat of food insecurity. By nature both tribes are non-farming communities and have never benefited from any post independence state sanctioned policy to improve food security. Due to the semi arid conditions of the district, both communities usually search for available pasture and water for themselves and for their livestock. As a coping strategy in the face of the vagaries of nature, most Pokots and Karamojongs split their communal families into smaller units and migrate in different directions in search of food. However, this has often at times led to intermittent intra-pastoralist conflicts between the two tribes because of lack of critical grazing land, food, and water and also because of the cultural importance of cattle upheld by the two tribes.

Swords into Ploughshares: Implications of the December 2007 Elections on Food Security

Kenya recently reeled under the effects of ethnic violence which was initially sparked of by the presidential elections. As millions of ethnic communities were driven from their productive lands especially in the Rift Valley, the aftereffects of such actions are yet to be felt.

The displaced farmers and agricultural labourers were forced to move away from the fighting and destructions and have lost out on essential entitlements such as food, employment and income. While the government has promised to relocate the displaced individuals back to their communities in the Rift Valley, traumatised farming communities (especially the Kikuyus) have chosen to go back to their ancestral homes rather than their place of livelihood. As a result, farms will likely lie desolate and prospects of employment and income from productive farms will fade.

Civic representatives of the displaced have called for the disbursement of funds to enable the return of a 'business as usual' climate to the affected regions. However, as days turn into months without food production it's not only the displaced that will suffer the most from food insecurity but the whole country will likely feel the pinch. The government might find it hard to provide equitable funds for food mobilisation and will probably concentrate on funding the Rift Valley first since it's the most fertile. The less fertile districts such as North Eastern and Eastern provinces will likely continue with its food insecurity prominence until the government recognises the severity of the problems. Districts that have economic resilience because they are business hubs, such as Nairobi and Mombasa, might be able to ride out the food insecurity wave by initially amending their dietary habits and later by importing surplus foods from other neighbouring countries such as Tanzania.

In most conflict affected regions especially in Africa the root causes of conflict such as ethnicity and uneven distribution of resources never completely dissipate even though piece-meal solutions have been found.

The worrying part for Kenya in the near future would be if the ethnic schisms in society continue to affect food security even after the peace deal between the protagonists has been reached. The use of 'hunger as a weapon' has been widely used in African countries especially in countries that solely rely on agriculture as their main economic resource. Disruptions in food supply, roadblocks and sieges of food consignments, and unreasonably high food prices from certain areas are all hallmarks of 'hunger as a weapon'. One can only hope that this scenario does not fully play itself out in the agricultural-dependent Kenya but one cannot help noticing the use of roadblocks during the early days of political unrest in Kenya and the long term disruptions that it might have caused in the food distribution cycle.

The Way Forward

For food security issues to be reasonably addressed in Kenya, it must be recognised that a one-size-fits all policy does not work. A policy that incorporates the geographical complications of every national district within the broader international liberalisation rubric has to be created. The policy has to be inextricably linked to the root causes of food insecurity from a regional perspective and tie it to a short term and long term policy framework and intervention.

There is a need for Kenyan food security policy makers to fully understand the social, cultural, political, regional and economic factors that can generate a food crisis and its impact on national food security. More importantly, is the need for policy to identify the areas that are in dire need for food security interventions and determine resilient ways of creating and maintaining communal food systems.

A food security policy should not create a perception that there are winners and losers. There has to be an all encompassing strategy to include all constituents who are covered in the policy. This should ultimately included marginalised communities such as pastoralists and districts that have insufficient agricultural research due to its geographic nature. The involvement of traditional/informal systems of governance in terms of accessing water and land tenure should be envisaged especially for the North Eastern province and formal context-specific structures of implementing basic food safety nets and a scientific shift towards attaining drought resistant crops should be sourced for the Eastern province.

While the country will soon undergo a constitution reform process due to the uneven nature of society caused by perennial linkages between political patronage, ethnicity, and resource distribution, the same process should also influence the trajectory towards creating a new food security policy for Kenya. The most important point is that constituents of the new food policy should also recognise that ethnicity and economics play a major factor in food (in)security and how and why it affects them should serve as a great selling point for the new policy.