From Cattle to Corn: Attributes of Emerging Farming Systems of Former Pastoral Nomads in East Pokot, Kenya
2013
Greiner, Clemens | Alvarez, Miguel | Becker, Mathias
Crop cultivation under rain-fed conditions is a recent innovation among the formerly pastoral-nomadic Pokot in north-central Kenya. We have examined the socioecological dynamics of land-use change from an interdisciplinary perspective. The patterns of transition to agropastoralism are closely related to both the biogeophysical attributes of the area and the economic characteristics of the households. While the use of advanced agronomic practices in the highlands is associated with annual maize grain yields of >2 Mg ha ⁻¹, unfavorable climatic and edaphic conditions, as well as the limited agronomic knowledge of the newcomer farmers in the lowland and mid-hill zones, make field crop production there an opportunistic, spatially scattered, and rather erratic land-use strategy. The accelerated transition to crop cultivation and the spatiotemporal differences in sedentarization between zones contribute to a fragmentation and shortage of land, which results in growing interhousehold inequalities and increasing conflicts within Pokot society.
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