Loss of farmland fuels ‘looming crisis’ across Africa
The New York Times
LAIKIPIA, Kenya — The two elders, wearing weather-beaten cowboy hats with the strings cinched under their chins, stood at the edge of an empty farm, covering their mouths in disbelief.
Their homes — neat wooden cabins — had been smashed open. All their cattle had been stolen. So had their chickens. House after house stood vacant, without another soul around. It was as if some huge force had barreled into the village and swept away all the life.
Sioyia Lesinko Lekisio, one of the elders, had no doubts who did this. Swarms of herders from another county had invaded, attacking any farm or cattle ranch in their path, big or small, stealing livestock, ransacking homes and shooting people with highpowered assault rifles.
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. “They want our land.”
Kenya has a land problem. Africa itself has a land problem. The continent seems so vast — but in a way, that is an illusion.
Population swells, climate change, soil degradation, erosion, poaching, global food prices and even the benefits of affluence are exerting incredible pressure on African land. They are fueling conflicts across the continent, from Nigeria in the west to Kenya in the east —including here in Laikipia
Large groups of people are on the move, desperate for usable land. Data from NASA satellites reveals an overwhelming degradation of agricultural land throughout Africa, with one recent study showing that more than 40 million Africans are trying to survive off land whose agricultural potential is declining.
At the same time, high birthrates and lengthening life spans mean that by the end of this century, there could be as many as 4 billion people on the continent, about 10 times the population 40 years ago.
It is a two-headed problem, scientists and activists say, and it could be one of the gravest challenges Africa faces: The quality of farmland in many areas is getting worse, and the number of people squeezed onto that land is rising fast.
“It’s a looming crisis,” said Odenda Lumumba, head of the Kenya Land Alliance, a group that works on land reform. “We are basically reachingthe end of the road.”
New pressures
More than in any other region of the world, people in Africa live off the land. Seventy percent of Africa’s population makes a living through agriculture, higher than on any other continent, the World Bank says. But as the population rises, with more siblings competing for their share of the family farm, the slices are getting thinner.
A changing climate makes things even harder. Scientists say large stretches of Africa are drying up, and they predict more desertification, more drought and more hunger. This year, famine is pushing more than 10 million people in Somalia, Nigeria and South Sudan to the brink of starvation.
But much of Africa’s farmland is in danger for another, perhaps simpler, reason: overuse. Fast-growing populations mean that many African families can’t afford to let land sit fallow and replenish. They have to take every inch of their land and farm or graze it constantly, making it difficult to grow crops.
The fact that several of Africa’s biggest economies have grown impressively in the past 10 years may seem like an answer, but analysts say the newfound affluence may actually compound these pressures.
As people gain wealth, they consume more — more energy, more water and usually more meat, all of which intensify the pressures on the environment. In the past 15 years, the number of cows in Kenya has shot up by more than 60 percent to around 20 million, driving a scramble for grazing lands.
Farmland is also rapidly vanishing into housing tracts andshopping centers to serve Africa’sgrowing and more affluentpopulation.
And then there’s the battle to protect Africa’s wildlife. Wildlife habitats are being threatened across the continent, in great part because of new farms and new fences, and activists say something drastic needs to be done to protectendangered species.
Laikipia County, a few hours’ drive north of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, is a microcosm of many of these complicated issues. On this one rugged plateau, poor herders, rich landowners, large- and small-scale farmers, commercial cattle ranchers, tour operators, passionate wildlife activists, elephants, lions, hyenas, cows, goats and zebras are all competing for the same space.
People have always fought over territory, and Laikipia is no exception. But many residents say this past year has been the bloodiest ever. At least 80 people have been killed, and in mid-July, a large group of herders killed a half-dozen police officers and stole their weapons.
“These ideas of landabundant Africa are increasingly outdated,” said Thomas Jayne, a leading agricultural economist based at Michigan State University. “Land disputes are going to become more and more common, and more and more severe.”
“Laikipia,” said Mr. Jayne, who conducts research across the continent, “is just the tip of the iceberg.”