Premium
Enabling modernisation, marginalising alternatives? Kenya's agricultural policy and smallholders
Author(s) -
Ajwang Fredrick,
Arora Saurabh,
Atela Joanes,
Onyango Joel,
Kyari Mohammad
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.3660
Subject(s) - modernization theory , promotion (chess) , agency (philosophy) , agriculture , bureaucracy , colonialism , agroecology , agricultural policy , economics , economic growth , international development , political science , sociology , geography , social science , politics , law , archaeology
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.