Kenya’s land area under crop farming rose by 126% in three decades to reach 7.8 million hectares with the country’s main staple food, maize, realizing biggest gain in production.
Data by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the increase in agricultural land use from 3.46 million hectares was driven my conversions of grasslands mainly to support food and industrial crops.
“The matrix shows that grasslands were largely converted into croplands while forests were largely converted into grasslands and croplands. Similarly, croplands were converted into forestlands and this may illustrate the effect of agroforestry systems where trees are grown in farmlands,” said KNBS in the Development of Land Accounts in Kenya report.
According to the report, maize production recorded the highest increase from approximately 2.3 tonnes to 3.3 million tonnes between 1990 and 2021 alone.
During the period, beans production went up from 400,000 tonnes to 700,000 tonnes to record second highest jump followed by Irish potato where production grew from 800,000 tonnes to 2.1 million tonnes. In the three decade period to 2021, rice production grew from 40,000 metric tonnes to 200,000 tonnes.
“These impressive growth rates can be attributed to the expansion of the areas under cultivation and increment in the yields of the crops. Regarding industrial crops, tea and sugarcane production has been on the rise, whereas coffee and barley production has been on the decline, the negative growth in barley and coffee production has mainly been contributed by the sustained reduction in their yields and acreage since 1990,” added KNBS.
The report further shows that while the country boasts total land area of 59,203,808ha out of which 97.8% is land and about 2% water, only 20% of the land cover is suitable for medium to high-potential agriculture, while the major part is arid and semi-arid.
Grasslands accounts for the largest share of Kenya’s land area 40,163,687ha equivalent to 67.8%, forestlands 6.1%, wetlands 2.2% and urban settlements 1.8% equivalent to 1.8%.
