More and more of Kenya’s farmlands are coming under the control of people who live and work in urban centres. Over the past two decades, the proportion they control has grown to nearly a third of Kenya’s total agricultural land.
This trend has also been recorded in Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. Urban residents acquire rural farmlands because they see land as an attractive investment. They think of farming as potentially rewarding because of rising food prices, liberalised agricultural markets and the growing demand for food in rapidly urbanising areas.
The rural, small-scale farmer has long been the focus of agricultural transformation efforts on the continent. But some researchers and policymakers regard urban residents engaged in farming from afar as more innovative and entrepreneurial – capable of advancing commercial agriculture. These urban residents have better access to financial capital as well as information on markets and commodities.
Other researchers have pointed out that the impacts of urban-based farmers are either ambiguous or negligible.
For my PhD in Geography I investigated whether and how Kenyan urban residents engaged in farming from afar were shaping the development of commercial agriculture in the country. I also looked into the relations that these urban residents have with the rural people and places where they are active.
I found that the increasing control of rural farmlands by urban residents is reshaping the agricultural profiles of rural areas. This happens through the decisions they make about what to grow on their farms. They also influence the livelihood opportunities that are available to rural residents as well as prevailing regimes of labour, expertise and food systems.
Their impact has also been felt through farming practices which prioritise profit over sound land stewardship. My research points to the need to pay closer attention to the impacts of these farmers on rural agricultural landscapes.
Focus on financial returns
A popular term for people who farm from afar in Kenya is “telephone farmers”. Sometimes they’re called “weekend farmers” or “briefcase farmers”. I use the term “translocal farmers”.
The concept of translocality draws attention to how this type of farmer straddles rural and urban settings.
Over 14 months, I interviewed 50 translocal farmers, their farm managers, and county agricultural officials. I focused on the counties of Nakuru and Narok in Kenya’s Rift Valley region. These two counties have highly productive rural farmlands which jointly contribute about 9% of Kenya’s total agricultural production.
These farmlands attract urban residents who are interested in commercial farming, partly because they are close to the cities of Nairobi and Nakuru, and because land is available.
With the permission of the translocal farmers, I visited the farms to observe and record the activities there, including interactions between labourers and managers. The visits also enabled me to verify information obtained from the interviews.
This research revealed that translocal farmers were shaping the agricultural landscape through their decisions on types of crops to plant.
Translocal farmers said they preferred crops that promised decent financial returns and did not require a lot of attention. They chose to cultivate tree crops such as avocados, or grass varieties which could be used as fodder or hay. Vegetable crops such as cabbage, tomatoes and potatoes, or cereals like wheat require regular applications of pesticides and fertilisers. But tree crops and grasses typically only require close attention during planting and harvesting.
That makes them less costly in terms of labour and agricultural inputs, as well as time spent in supervision of farm activities. Vegetables have shorter growth cycles than tree crops or grasses and so can provide faster financial returns, but that means farmers have to source buyers on a regular basis. And vegetables perish fast, which might compel farmers to sell their produce at low prices.
This trend of translocal farmers choosing to plant trees or crops that require less intensive care has also been seen in areas of Tanzania and Uganda where urban residents have expanded their control of rural agricultural land.
Viewed against the reality of increasing control of rural agricultural land by urban residents, these choices shape the agricultural profiles of rural spaces.
Translocal farmers and soil degradation
Farming from afar may also have negative impacts on soil conservation and land degradation because translocal farmers are often absent from their land.
Agricultural officials pointed out to me that translocal farmers were frequently unavailable when the county was undertaking land and soil conservation initiatives that required farmer participation.
In Narok especially, farmers largely gained access to rural agricultural land by leasing from local land owners. County agricultural officers pointed to the high turnover of translocal farmers who would farm for a period and then disappear at the end of the lease period or if their enterprise failed.
As a result, county agricultural officials often did not know who was farming where. Further, translocal farmers felt greater pressure to maximise the returns from their farming so as to recover the funds spent in obtaining access to the land.
Sometimes they would farm in ways that degraded the land – like ploughing along the length of a slope instead of across it to conserve tractor fuel, or neglecting terracing and cover-cropping. Those soil conservation measures would reduce the ground area available for planting crops.
Agricultural policy often takes it for granted that farmers live where they farm. This research has shown that the increasing control of rural agricultural land by urban residents demands greater attention from Kenya’s government. At the national level, policymakers must understand what changing agricultural profiles mean for food security and rural livelihoods. And local government officials need to put more effort into engaging with the people who farm in their respective counties, whether or not they reside there.
