Nairobi — Kenya 's Rift Valley province is famed for large-scale food production alongside images of dying animals and hungry people.
A visit to a section of the Kajiado district about 50 kilometers from Nairobi shows me a vast landscape with little or no vegetation and several rickety animals struggling to survive the heat and the disappearing grass. But a further drive leads to a farm where green vegetables and fruits are growing. It stands out when you arrive - proof that farming is possible, even in arid areas. This farm is not in a green house; it is out in the open.
I am visiting the farm with a friend who is interested in land that is for sale nearby. Wilson, our guide, tells us that the farm is owned by an Italian, who harvests rain water, has boreholes and operates a school that teaches farming methods to area residents.
The water table is very high, as evidenced by five boreholes within a two-kilometer radius, which is unusual for this part of Kenya. But why is the Italian's farm so different from others in the vicinity? Why are the residents of this region dependent on food from other parts of the country?
Food insecurity in Kenya has dominated headlines locally and abroad. The fact that Maasai, who are the majority of the population here, are mainly herders, is only part of the equation. During the last three years of drought, they have become affected by hunger, too. In many cases, the pastoralist communities are the hardest hit. The same cycle can be expected next year unless there is a change in attitude and way of life.
Communities should develop new ways to increase productivity and, at the same time, use resources more efficiently, such as improved methods for feeding livestock and developing alternative markets for agricultural products. Why can't the people living in productive areas grow food that can sold to neighboring communities, who may be hardest hit by the rising cost of food?
When we think of food security, it is easy to think only about the areas with armed bandits like northern Kenya or Somalia or the semi-arid areas in Rift Valley. But information from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) exposes many of our assumptions about food security as myth.
FAO has defined four dimensions of food insecurity:
1. Food availability- sufficient quantities of food supplied through domestic production. In some areas, you would like to buy food, but it's not there. It simply isn't available at any price.
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2. Food access- availability of adequate quantity of food to individuals in terms of resources, income, and common traditions. For instance, it can over-priced, which means the money that could normally feed a family of three for a month can only feed one. Have you ever wondered why people in the slums fight over petrol tankers, even though they know their lives are in danger? Or why we scramble for a piece of elephant meat, whether it is inspected or not? Or why people eat dying livestock? This is mainly because the cost of living is going up, salaries are stagnant, some people are getting fired and yet have families to feed.
3. Food utilisation- quality of the food basket for consumption determined by cultural, socioeconomic conditions of food diet, sanitation, clean water, etc. An example is vegetables planted on raw sewage and sold to unsuspecting consumers in the city. Even though you think you are food secure because you have money, you may not be safe.
Statistics from Nepad, the New Partnership for African Development, say that about 50 per cent of the African population is food insecure and that progress is not occurring at a pace to attain the UN Millennium Development Goals for reducing hunger by 2015. Nepad's philosophy is to increase reliance on Africa's own resources, but the challenge facing the continent is how to accelerate the reduction of food and nutrition insecurity through fostering a mind-set change to achieve that necessary mobilization and utilization of African resources.
