Context | justnatural

Local and historical context

After world War II, the so called "Green Revolution", with its enormous imput of chemicals, seemed to be a solution for devasted Europe and to world starvation in general. But while the soil in industrialised countries got poorer and poorer, the chemical industry became more and more powerfull. Today a few multinational firms control agricultural production, and thus nutrition and ecologie, worldwide.

However, the chemical method has shown its limits and destruction potential since a long time and today, in Western Countries, the public opinion is slowly becoming aware of the danger. Governments have started to subsidise conversation to organic agriculture, thousands of deceived farmers have radically stopped to apply chemicals to their soil, consumer movements are multiplying rapidly...

This is not the case in Kenya. Today, Kenya's most important export articles are agricultural (flowers, tea, coffee, bananas...) that are grown with industrial methods on thousands of hectors by a few farmers. The country also produces an important volume of organic products, equaly destined for export.

At the same time, due to food shortage, basic nutrients, such as rice and flour, have to be imported. The availibility and the price of these staples are dependant on the world market. This situation fragilizes the country and penalizes, most of all, the poor.

The large majority of the population, 80%, consists of small scale farmers, most of whom are women. Their work sustains their families and helps education of their children. The evolution towards large scale agriculture, which is dominated by men, will push women and their families to the very edge of society.

Kenya suffers from multiple structural problems that hinder the developpement of small scale farms:

Climat change and progressve loss of biodiversity.
Rapid population growth leads to continous devision of family land.
Lack of education, access to information and an educational system that dates from colonial times, hinder innovation, critical thinking and possibility of choice.
Transport problems, due to bad roads, make access to markets difficult.
The traditional method of agriculture, that consisted of rotating cultivated land over a cycle of 7 years, has not been sufficiently replaced by new and adapted organic technics.
Seasonal overproduction leads to dumping of enormous quantities of fruit and vegetables.
Food conservation technics are widely unknown.

Though there are large regional differences, at present, the average Kenyan family lives on a plot of 0,1 acres of land, that has to feed 8 familly members, and disposes of an income of 30 US$ per month. Organic technics, such as mulching, intercropping, water, soil and food preservation... are often unknown, and thus the harvested yields are very poor.