By Nelly Madegwa
As of August 2024, 13.6 million Kenyans were facing insufficient access to food, marking a troubling rise of 640,000 people in just three months, although this is slightly lower than the peak a month earlier. This food crisis can largely be attributed to soaring food prices, with food inflation at 5.1 per cent, still a significant driver of the country’s overall inflation rate, which fell to 3.6 per cent in September 2024.
Amid these alarming statistics, the role of women in agriculture—particularly their land rights—is increasingly critical. Women, despite being central to food production in Kenya, are often marginalised in land ownership, undermining their ability to contribute fully to food security and leaving millions more at risk of hunger.
Two years ago, Mercy Amadi worked as a subsistence farmer, growing cereals, sweet potatoes, yams, vegetables, and bananas. Her harvest sustained her family through the seasons, with a surplus sold at the local market and secondary school.
“Every meal we ate came from the work of my hands. It made me proud,” Amadi recalls.
She fondly remembers watching her children play in the lush banana grove, a source of both nourishment and pride. However, this changed when her husband converted their one-acre plot into a sugarcane plantation.
“Before the sugarcane, the farm felt like a sanctuary,” she says. “Now, it’s just rows of sugarcane, and every day I worry about our next meal.”
The economic allure of sugarcane farming was undeniable, with promises of high returns from buyers who frequented her village.
“The money they talked about sounded good,” Amadi admits, “but I knew it wasn’t that simple. Sugarcane takes time, and we couldn’t eat it while it grew.”
She tried to persuade her husband not to uproot the food crops, but her objections were dismissed.
“I tried to explain that we needed food on our table more now than we needed money in the future,” she explains, frustration evident in her voice. Her husband would not listen and revoked her user rights to the land—rights she had always assumed were secure as his wife. “I felt powerless”.
As the bananas were uprooted to make way for rows of sugarcane, the once-thriving farm became a monoculture, barren of any immediate sustenance. With sugarcane taking months to grow, her family faced an uncertain future, forced to purchase food that they once grew themselves.
The emotional toll on Amadi was immense. She struggled to reconcile her identity as a farmer with the new reality.
“We had to buy everything,” she explains. “It was hard, so hard. Farming was my life. It’s what I knew, what I was good at. To have that taken away… it was like losing a part of me”.
To cope, she found small ways to reclaim her sense of purpose, planting vegetables in the few spaces left untouched by the sugarcane. “It wasn’t much, but it was something. It reminded me that I was still a farmer,” she says, her voice filled with quiet determination.
Economic impact of monoculture
Amadi’s story is not unique. Across Kenya, the shift from diversified smallholder farming to monoculture cash crops like sugarcane is becoming alarmingly common. These transitions are often driven by the lure of higher profits. However, for many smallholder farmers, monoculture farming creates financial vulnerabilities. According to this study, without food to sustain them while they wait for long-maturing crops like sugarcane, smallholder farming families like Amadi’s fall into cycles of food insecurity.
Economic and Environmental Impact
Beyond the immediate economic risks, monoculture farming brings environmental costs. Continuous cultivation of the same crop depletes soil nutrients, disrupts ecosystems, and increases the need for chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which degrade the land even further. The result is poor harvests, soil exhaustion, and an escalating dependence on costly farm inputs, further diminishing the returns on what seemed like a profitable choice.
In contrast, diversified farming — where crops like vegetables, legumes, and cereals are grown together, enriches the soil and provides year-round harvests. This approach not only sustains families, but also creates a buffer against market fluctuations and environmental shocks, contributing to both household and national food security.
Women’s land rights key to solving Kenya’s food crisis
Kenyan women are at the heart of food production. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics 2019, women make up 60% of those engaged in agriculture. They are responsible for 70-80% of food production, particularly in subsistence farming, yet own only 2% of the land. Women manage 40% of the small-scale farms, but only 1% of all the registered land titles are in their names, and between 5-6% are held jointly with their partners or other family members.
The disconnect between their labour and their land rights severely limits their capacity to make long-term investments in sustainable farming and food production.
Though Kenya’s constitution provides for equal rights to land ownership, cultural and legal barriers continue to exclude women from securing their rightful stake in land. In many communities, patriarchal customs dictate that land ownership passess exclusively through male inheritance, leaving women with temporary user rights at best.
Professor Ruth Oniang’o, a food and nutrition expert, explains, “The assumption is that women will access land through marriage. But in reality, they only gain user rights, not true ownership. This discourages them from investing in land they do not control.”
“These cultural barriers trap smallholder women farmers in a state of ‘permanent exclusion,’ preventing them from making meaningful decisions about land use,” says Prof. Oniang’o. “Yet, they are still expected to feed their families, including the very men denying them their land rights!”
These cultural constraints, compounded by legal challenges, make it difficult for women to claim land ownership in Kenya. Although the Matrimonial Property Act allows women to claim land jointly acquired during marriage, proving joint ownership often requires navigating complex processes, including proof of marriage. For unregistered or customary marriages, it becomes even harder for women to claim the land they farm. In court disputes, women must prove their contribution to property acquisition, but non-monetary contributions, often undocumented, are undervalued by courts, which tend to prioritize financial input—disadvantaging women engaged in unpaid domestic work.
“The process of succeeding land is long and expensive, with lawyers charging high fees, limiting the number of women who can afford it,” says Charles Rading, the Kakamega County Coordinator for the National Land Commission. Additionally, the Succession Act restricts widows’ inheritance rights, particularly if they remarry or have no children, further disenfranchising women from the land they have worked for years.
According to the Kenya Land Alliance, women often lack representation in land governance bodies, limiting their ability to advocate for their rights. Many urban and rural women are also unaware of land laws and registration processes, perpetuating their exclusion from land ownership, one of the most crucial factors of production.
Breaking Barriers: Success and Solutions
Despite these challenges, some women have managed to reclaim their rights to land and, in doing so, have transformed their lives and their communities. Edith Khavere is one such woman. After a difficult divorce, Khavere purchased a one-acre plot, determined to take control of her future. “Owning that land changed everything for me,” she says. “I could invest in it without fear of losing it. It gave me the power to provide for my family in a way I hadn’t before.”
Khavere’s farm grew to become a key supplier to local markets, and over time, she was able to retire from her teaching job to focus entirely on agriculture. “The security of owning my land gave me the confidence to expand. Now, I’m not just feeding my children—I’m feeding my community.”
Her story is proof that when women are given the power to own land, they become engines of economic growth and resilience. They invest in sustainable practices, they feed their families, and they contribute to Kenya’s food security on a larger scale. “When women have control over land, they can truly contribute to food security and economic growth,” Khavere says.
Empowering women to feed Kenya
Dr. Makini, Deputy Director General of Crops at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO), emphasizes the connection between women’s land rights and food security. “Women are responsible for 70-80% of food production, particularly in subsistence farming.However, their contributions to food security are hindered by limited land rights. Ownership and control of land extend beyond mere access; they encompass the ability to decide on land use, financing, and cultivation. Given that women make up 50.3% of Kenya’s population, their exclusion from land ownership has significant implications for the country’s economic performance and food security,”
“Women’s limited land rights reflect broader gender inequalities that impede their overall empowerment and capacity to contribute to food security. It also slows the process of land utilization in many households, negatively affecting food production.Men are the ones invited to meetings and seminars where they learn about new technologies and innovations in agriculture because of their secure land tenure status, yet it’s the women who actually do the farming. Without secure land tenure, women are excluded from these opportunities, leaving them at a significant disadvantage.”
Without secure land rights, women’s contributions to food security are hindered as they are unlikely or are unable to invest in sustainable farming practices, which enhance productivity and resilience to food insecurity.
Furthermore, secure land rights enable women to diversify crops, produce cash crops, and generate income, which they can reinvest in their families and communities. This, in turn, improves household nutrition and economic stability, contributing to national food security. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), if women had the same access to productive resources as men, farm output would increase by 20 to 30 percent.
“For many women, farming is about feeding their families. But when it shifts to cash crops, men get involved because they’re more interested in making money. Even when a food crop becomes a cash crop, like indigenous vegetables, men start to take over,” says Prof Rurh Oniang’o.
Prof. Oniang’o further elaborates, citing the example of indigenous leafy vegetables: “It was mostly women growing them, but once men saw the profit potential, they got involved in picking, marketing, and even growing. Now, these vegetables are making their way to cities, and you see men actively participating.”
While food security can be achieved through production or purchasing, when women farmers increase productivity, they earn income by selling surplus crops. “Income allows women to buy diverse foodstuffs and engage in income-generating activities like poultry and dairy farming, enhancing resilience against food insecurity. However, limited land rights restrict women to low-profit crops, while secure tenure enables them to diversify and improve household nutrition and income.” asserts Dr. Makini
For Kenya to fully tap into the potential of its women farmers, the barriers to land ownership must be addressed. While there has been robust legal reforms to ensure women can claim, inherit, and register land in their names. Public awareness campaigns must follow to educate both men and women about these rights and the long-term economic benefits of secure land ownership.
The Digital Land Governance Programme (DLGP), in collaboration with the European Union, FAO, and the Kenyan government, now in its second phase, is focusing on digitizing the land sector, sustainable land management, conflict resolution, and strengthening legal frameworks. The program has significantly advanced women’s land rights. Ms. Husna Mbarak, the DLGP manager at FAO, emphasizes the importance of recognizing women as the largest users of land in small-scale agriculture in land governance. Kenya’s Constitution mandates gender representation in community land management committees and allows women to be registered as independent landowners.
This legal shift enables women to vote, hold leadership positions, and participate in land transactions, which require both spouses to be present before county land boards. The program has registered over 70 community lands, empowering women to take active roles in land governance. The program is supporting the government in creating a gender policy for the land sector, promoting gender-inclusive planning, and improving women’s digital literacy for better access to digitized land records via the Ardhi Sasa system. These initiatives aim to boost women’s participation in land governance and decision-making at local and national levels.
The link between women’s land rights and food security in Kenya cannot be overstated. As key contributors to food production, women play an integral role in the country’s agricultural success, economic stability and food security. However, their limited access to land ownership hinders their ability to maximize these contributions. Securing land rights for women is not just necessary ; it is an urgent step toward building a more food-secure and equitable Kenya.
By ensuring that women have secure land rights, we empower women like Amadi to make informed decisions about land use, invest in agricultural productivity, and ultimately strengthen the food systems that millions depend on.
This article was produced as part of the Aftershocks Data Fellowship (22-23) with support from the Africa Women Journalism Project (AWJP) in partnership with The ONE Campaign and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).
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