Enabling modernisation, marginalising alternatives? Kenya's agricultural policy and smallholders

Fredrick Ajwang; Saurabh Arora; Joanes Atela; Joel Onyango; Mohammad  Kyari

doi:10.1002/jid.3660

Enabling modernisation, marginalising alternatives? Kenya's agricultural policy and smallholders

Fredrick Ajwang, Saurabh Arora, Joanes Atela, Joel Onyango, Mohammad Kyari

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

20 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

To address intensifying social and environmental challenges, development policy must learn from inclusions and exclusions of past discourses. We analyse Kenya's post-colonial agricultural policy discourse. Our analysis reveals a near-exclusive focus on the promotion of agricultural modernisation based on industrial farm inputs, a bureaucratic state and/or ‘the liberalised market’. It was with this thrust to modernise that smallholders (and other farmers) were generally seen as aligning. Smallholders' agency to diverge from modernisation was thus marginalised in the policy discourse. Overall then, the promotion of diverse agroecological and other farmer-led directions of development was largely missing from Kenya's policy landscape.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	3-20
Number of pages	18
Journal	Journal of International Development
Volume	35
Issue number	1
Early online date	6 Jun 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3660
Publication status	Published - 26 Mar 2023
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Funding

DFID-UKRI ESRC [grant number ES/N014456/1].

Funders	Funder number
Economic and Social Research Council	ES/N014456/1

Keywords

Agriculture development
Smallholder agency
Sustainable development goals
Sustainability
directions of development

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Social Sciences(all)

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1002/jid.3660Licence: CC BY

Ajwang2022VORFinal published version, 306 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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Enabling modernisation, marginalising alternatives? Kenya's agricultural policy and smallholders

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

Access to Document

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Cite this