Mwana wa nyoka…
The
Kenyan food system is broken. It’s a venal and extremely predatory system that
is both child and acolyte of the society that produced it, including our system
of governance. In that way, one could say that it functions exactly like it’s
supposed to function. It’s a dysfunctional system
that is built on legacies of colonial and post-colonial occupation, extremely
contentious, bloody and contested clashes over land use, unresolved rights of
occupancy, and the right to resources. It’s characterised
by regional inequality, corruption, deep and normalised gender inequality, and
a fundamentally broken land tenure system amongst others. Global politics around
access rights to seeds, fertiliser and other farm inputs play out in how we
produce and consume our food with the agro-food oligopolies being winners in an
increasingly winner takes all global system. Kenya, like many African countries,
is also finding itself increasingly less able to weather the volatility in food
geopolitics. As a result of all the above, the food we eat is often
contaminated, unsustainably farmed and improperly regulated. Food security is a
dream for many of our citizens, and our birthrights- including seeds passed
down from our ancestors- are being sold out from under us as ‘leaders’ loot and
plunder from the very system that feeds us.
It’s a system where schismatic inequities
translate to the right to food being enjoyed on a regional basis. The privileging
of dominant cultures means that agrarian production methods, systems of land
tenure, labour and access to foods dominate. And that poverty and marginalisation
for non-agrarian populations (e.g. pastoralists and low income urban dwellers) remain the primary cause of hunger in Kenya. It’s
a problem that has regional dimensions where e.g. food poverty is endemic
in the North Eastern region with a wasting rate of close to 20% as opposed to a
7% national average.
That the system is fundamentally not fit for purpose is seen in that the
food that we are consuming is not always fit for human consumption. Recent
reports in the media remind us that the food we eat is unhealthy, sometimes carcinogenic and poisonous. It is certainly not from a lack of agencies to oversee food safety
in the country. There are at least 22 MDAs that are charged with overseeing
our food and at last count, at least over a dozen acts and ordinances
that regulate our food system. Despite this, the food on
our table- especially for the low income urban consumer remains unsafe, and at
times dangerous to health.
In addition to the food being
down right unhealthy, citizens are also not getting enough food. Including
farmers! Over half of
farmers are buying food, and close to 75% of small holder
income goes towards food. And while the right to food is
enshrined in the Kenyan constitution, it’s clear that we are quite far from
fulfilling our obligations to our citizens on this front.
Like clockwork, Kenya experiences
drought every three years. And like clockwork, people face hunger and
malnutrition. Over a third of Kenya’s population is chronically food insecure. And
hunger and malnutrition, is the diabolical gift that keeps on giving. The
impact of under-nutrition on lactating mothers and children is devastating and
sometimes irreversible where children who’ve experienced stunting display
poor mental development and slower brain development. They’re smaller and less
able to concentrate in class than their counterparts. Malnourished mothers have
malnourished babies- and as part of a twisted legacy, stunted children will in
all likelihood give birth to malnourished babies. Rinse, wash, repeat. In a twisted,
vicious cycle.
A look at just two of the major
pathologies that give rise to the broken food system- gender injustice and
corruption shows that if we are serious about creating a food system that is
capable of producing safe, healthy and sustainably produced food- we need to
correct the underlying conditions that give rise to this unequal and predatory
food system that we find ourselves with.
Gender Injustice...
The food system is rife
with many contradictions that defy any sense and reason. I’m still unable to
parse the fact that Kenyan women & girls produce most of our food and
that most of Kenya’s hungry are women and girls. If we are serious about broader
social and political reform in Kenya, a good point to start would be here. As Gloria
Steinem says, if we accept in the homestead that there are those who cook (or
farm), and those that eat, we internalise and accept that in the larger
society, there will be those that produce, and those that eat.
Traditional gendered subordination of
women means that women have less land ownership (‘marry it, or inherit it’) and
they have less access to inputs of production. While the Kenyan constitution corrected
a long standing injustice that allowed customary law to dictate inheritance and
land ownership rights of women, and it is now possible for women to inherit
family land, the reality on the ground is slow to change where e.g. Kenyan
women run over 80% of our farms, but women held land titles are only at 1%.
This matters. Where women don’t own
the land, they consequentially have less access to loans and other agricultural
inputs. As a result, women farms will have lower than expected yields. The FAO
estimates that we could easily increase agricultural production by 25-30% if women
had equal access to agricultural inputs.
Women also face atrocious working
conditions in the agricultural sector. They occupy the lowest rung of the
workforce and get lower wages and also have more vulnerable work (e.g. seasonal
work that comes with no social benefits). Sexual harassment in the
farms is rife and endemic. In a study
by Labour Rights, over 90% of people reported that they'd witnessed or been victim to a sexual harassment. Women in the farms
also report cases of sexual assault not only against them- but also against
their young daughters. Children that they had to take to work due to the absence of social protection like
acceptable child care facilities. A staggering 70% of men interviewed viewed
sexual harassment as normal and acceptable. A truly deplorable and shameful
state of affairs.
Women are underrepresented in decision
making structures in our food system with e.g. 17% of women being represented
in agricultural cooperative boards. Membership and leadership is also gendered
when it comes to type of crop with membership & leadership in ‘cash crop’
cooperatives being mainly male (coffee, tea, tobacco) and women are found more
in ‘food crops’ cooperatives (spices, cereals, dairy etc.).
Kenya has a
billion dollar agricultural export market. And this is built on the backs of women. The
system calls for urgent and radical reformation that is fair and equitable to
women if this is to be a tenable and functional food system.
Corruption....
Reading the Auditor General reports
on the steady looting of resources meant for assuring food access
makes for very, very depressing reading. Kenya relies almost
predominantly on rain-fed agriculture and the systematic loss of resources meant
for building
dams and irrigation
systems has consigned farmers to
praying and watching anxiously for the rain. This situation is made
even more fraught by the utterly short sighted and mindless gobbling up of land
in the main water towers that produce the rain we (still) rely on for the food we
eat.
Corruption is without a doubt the
termite that’s eating away at the very fabric of our agricultural system. We
lose billions every year paying for a fertiliser
company that doesn’t exist. The systematic looting of state corporations and
assets meant means that cronyism replaced vital and needed research and
investments in our agricultural sector. It’s a system where a state
corporation that owns over 80% of our seeds was “secretly
sold’ and ownership of our seeds- the commons- irregularly
passed into private hands. A story as old as independent Kenya is the one of
the fraud and mismanagement of our strategic maize reserve which has the
dubious distinction of being independent Kenya’s first
mega scandal.
That corruption is truly hurtful to farmers is seen for instance in
the coffee industry.
Despite Kenyan coffee being the second most lucrative global commodity,
coffee farmers are still impoverished due to the predatory and profit seeking nature of the global commodities market and its local minions. It's a situation that is then compounded by the shenanigans in and around the Nairobi
Coffee Exchange where up to a hundred
dollars per bag are routinely skimmed off the top of what farmers should receive
for premium coffee.
While corruption exists in every
human society in the globe, we need a new name for the type of corruption that
ails us. It’s a system that in its utterly soulless nature was perhaps last seen
during colonialism. It’s an extractive, predatory and society destroying system
that will lead to the guaranteed and total destruction of Kenya unless we make
urgent steps to curb it.
The Fix…
If the agricultural system serves as
the canary in the coal mine, it’s becoming obvious that we may have reached the
tipping point, and that we have systematically cannibalised the very system
that feeds us. It’s clear that our system needs urgent transformation- and not just
reform. We need urgent solutions that shall transform the underlying systems that
reproduce this unjust and unsustainable ways of food production,
distribution, procurement, consumption and disposal of food. As
such, merely addressing the economics or
tackling the issue as a problem of one of yields means that we fail to tackle the
interlinked and mutually reinforcing systems means that give rise to the
problems. If we attempt to apply a market based solution to the food system
without addressing the underlying food justice issues, we apply
a Band-Aid solution at best.
Equally problematic is the pitching
of Kenya’s food problem as a technological or logistics problem that
requires us to increase yields, decrease post-harvest losses etc. This
so-called Green Revolution is a fix that will in all likelihood spawn even
larger problems as this approach fails to take into account the even greater
consolidation of power into commercial hands. The private sector remains a key
and integral part of the agricultural system, but taking a neo liberal approach
promises to entrench labour practices that will continue to disadvantage the
small holder farmers- especially peasant women farmers in the country.
Fixing the food system
requires that we address the social justice issues that underlie it. This is a
call to arms for all of us working to fix the food system be it in food sovereignty,
food security and food justice movements. We need redistributive land justice
to be effected- years after the Ndung’u report made its findings. Urgent systematic
changes in the lands department need to be made- and the current leadership of
this ministry suggests that this is unlikely to happen. We need to review
social protection for informal and ‘casual’ labourers especially women. We need
to protect our inputs from predatory intellectual property rights. We need to
be serious about curbing the excesses of corruption and we need to dismantle
the systems that lead to perennially food insecure low income urban dwellers.
All else is doomed to fail.
