Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the basic agricultural unit and forms the penultimate layer of the village/catchment
in the Kiambu holarchy. Trade-offs and other interrelationships among land-use units
have a significant impact on the farm's health and sustainability. Land-use units cor-
responded to two conceptually different levels in the human activity holarchy (home-
stead, household), resulting in difficulties in sampling and interpretation. Homesteads
were an aggregation of semiautonomous households with no formal boundaries
between then. These resulted from the cultural practice by which sons—married or
single—build their houses around their father's houses. It is not clear to what extent
the reemergence of this phenomenon is a response to diminishing land sizes per
household and to what extent it represents some form of intergenerational inequity.
Although the existence of the village as level of organization in the human activ-
ity holarchy was expected, the level of social and cultural integration found was
surprising. Many formal and informal associations and organizations functioned at
this level. Communities were acutely aware of the boundaries of their village, and
certain sociocultural activities were exclusively undertaken within these boundaries.
Resources outside these boundaries were considered not available to the community
no matter how close.
2.4.2 s
y s t e m i C
D
e s C r i p t i o in
The descriptions provided by the communities in the initial workshops and in their
loop diagrams indicated that communities were acutely aware, in a systemic way,
of the biophysical and social economic factors important in determining the health
and sustainability of their agroecosystems and hence their livelihoods. Communities
were unencumbered by disciplinary training and provided systemic descriptions that
were detailed enough to make them useful but not bogged down in detail.
Villages—both extensive and intensive—closer to Nairobi were smaller both in
terms of area covered and in the number of households (Table 2.2). The structure of
the level penultimate to the village also varied by distance to Nairobi, with the closer
villages having fewer land-use units under the management of more than one house-
hold. Furthermore, these villages had more people with off-farm employment, while
a bigger proportion of the land was allocated to subsistence food crops. In addition,
agricultural production had evolved away from the traditional modes for which these
areas were considered most suitable. The effects of distance from Nairobi appear
to be related to urbanization, availability of off-farm employment, and an acces-
sible market for food crops. The difference in farm income between Kiawamagira
and Mahindi—the villages closest to Nairobi—was most likely because off-farm
employment was the main source of income in Mahindi.
Agriculture seemed to be dominated by coffee, tea, dairy, and kale production.
An interesting finding was that the average per acre income in Kiawamagira, where
vegetable production is predominant, was similar to that of Githima village, where tra-
ditional cash crops (coffee and tea) were produced. In contrast, the farm income per
acre in Thiririka village, in which vegetable production was predominant, was less
than half that of Kiawamagira, with the total farm income almost equal. This seems
to indicate an increased intensification as land sizes become smaller.
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