Agricultural Commercialisation in Meru County, Kenya: What are the Policy Implications?

Abstract

Contemporary processes of agrarian change tend to favour larger-scale, more consolidated farms over smallholders, while Kenya’s agricultural policy tends to promote export oriented commercial farming. These tensions, evident in different ways over time, raise important policy questions. What are the most advantageous forms of agricultural commercialisation? What scale and capital intensity in agricultural investment are appropriate? These questions in turn feed into the debates about alternative pathways of commercialisation and the role of different farming ‘models’. This study aimed to engage these debates. The study was carried out in Kenya’s Meru County and examined three agricultural farming models: outgrowers, medium-scale commercial farms and a plantation.