Geoscience Reference
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Equity dimensions at community and scheme levels and beyond
The need to consider whether and how development interventions enhance
or undermine equity within and across communities is highlighted in the
literatures on agricultural investment, contract farming and climate adaptation
(World Bank 2013; Silici and Locke 2013; Eriksen et al. 2011; Vermeulen and
Cotula 2010; Thomas and Twyman 2005; Adger et al. 2004; Warning and Key
2002; Little and Watts 1994). OG investments in infrastructure, markets, and
agricultural inputs and technologies may help to overcome constraints to
agricultural development and poverty reduction in rural areas and enhance local
adaptive capacity. Yet, because OG schemes link very different sets of actors, they
also carry the potential to create dependency and widen economic inequalities
within and between communities and households (Porter and Phillips-Howard
1997; Little and Watts 1994). This may be problematic because development
interventions that ignore existing power relations and social inequalities risk
exacerbating the vulnerabilities and processes of social, political and economic
marginalization (Eriksen et al. 2007).
Space considerations do not permit a full discussion of the equity issues
surrounding the allocation of power and access to resources within the two
communities studied here, and the ways in which OG schemes interact
with these dynamics. However, several points can be mentioned. First is the
question of who participates in and benefits from the two OG schemes. At KPL,
farmers participating in the SRI training and OG scheme represent a mixture
of small-, medium- and large-scale women and men farmers, with a greater
participation by small and medium, compared to large farmers. 7 The stipulation
for participation in the scheme is that farmers have access to ½ acre of land,
and that they grow the contracted variety, using SRI principles. However, OG
farmers in Lungo to a large degree represent the founding members of the
community who were relocated from the Kilimanjaro region to the village in
the early 1970s under the government's villagization policy. 8 Farmers were at
this time allocated plots within a village sugarcane farm. These plots were later
redistributed to farmers. Since then, the value of sugarcane plots has increased,
making it difficult for farmers who moved to Lungo after villagization, and
whose families are not among the original inhabitants, to acquire a sugarcane
farm. This point is illustrated by the fact that ownership of a sugarcane farm was
considered a sign of wealth by sub-village leaders and farmers during wealth-
ranking of households in Lungo (West 2011).
A second factor that affects the potential for OG schemes to contribute to
adaptive capacity at the community level is existing competition over land and
water resources. While KPL and MSE estates have both existed for some time,
increasing immigration into the region by farmers and livestock-keepers in
both communities is leading to growing pressures on land and water resources.
Conflicts between farming and livestock-keeping interests abounded in both
locations at the time of the fieldwork, some of which resulted in loss of lives
 
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