THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN SMALLHOLDER FARMERS AND FRAGILE TROPICAL AGROECOSYSTEMS IN THE KENYAN HIGHLANDS

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN SMALLHOLDER FARMERS AND FRAGILE TROPICAL AGROECOSYSTEMS IN THE KENYAN HIGHLANDS
A.N. Pell, D.M. Mbugua, L.V. Verchot, C.B. Barrett, L.E. Blume, J.G. Gamara, J.M. Kinyangi, C.J. Lehmann, A.O. Odenyo, S.O. Ngoze, B.N. Okumu, P.P. Marenya, S.J. Riha, and J. Wangil
POLICY BRIEF No. 3 January 2005
A project among Cornell University, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the World Agroforestry Centre, funded by the USAID BASIS Collaborative Research Support Program.

A project among Cornell University, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the World Agroforestry Centre, funded by the USAID BASIS Collaborative Research Support Program.

LINKAGES BETWEEN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND BIOPHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS
Farmers obviously rely on the land for their livelihoods. The converse, that ecosystem services depend on farmers’ behaviors, must also be recognized in order to improve agricultural productivity. Small farms in the central and western Kenyan highlands experiencing soil degradation provide an ideal context in which to invstigate interactions between human behavior, natural capital stocks, and the flow of ecosystem services. Small farmers routinely make decisions about land use and improvements, such as selection of crop varieties, livestock management strategies, soil nutrient amendments and labor allocations. These decisions fundamentally affect the growth of plants, production of livestock and functioning of soil micro‐ and macrofauna, which in turn affect soil structure and chemistry. To capture the complexity of Kenyan highlands agroecosystems, we are developing a dynamic, bioeconomic model under a project supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, in close collaboration with the BASIS CRSP project. Our goal is to model the linkages between biophysical and economic processes and to calibrate the model to identify threshold evels of ecosystem services and their interlinkage with corresponding socio‐economic thresholds defining wealth accumulation trajectories, following the economic concept of the poverty trap. The existence of widespread persistent poverty raises the possibility of “poverty traps,” states into which individuals, households, or even entire communities or nations might fall and from which escape is difficult. Nonlinear welfare dynamics with multiple equilibria (different steady states toward which households naturally gravitate at least one of which is below an appropriately defined povrty line) are characteristic of poverty traps. Capturing the economic aspects of poverty traps is complicated enough. But we aim also to link poverty dynamics with human responses and the impact that these have on the biophysical environment.
In order to capture poverty dynamics, measurements over time are required. Toward this end, we have collected panel data from households in two research sites in the Kenyan highlands, Madzuu (Vihiga District) and upper Embu District. We are exploring within‐ and between‐site variation in assets, income and expenditures to unravel the causes of persistent poverty and to explore those poverty traps which emerge from soil biology and agronomy and economics of farm management.