Climate Change and Food System in Kenya: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Climate change is long-term statistical change in climate variables whose impacts are evident on value chains and food systems in general. This book chapter examines the challenges in the Kenyan food system associated with increasing climate variability and factors that can be considered to achieve agro-food systems transformation for sustainability. The study observed the need for digital infrastructure enhancement; development of data sharing platforms; accelerated climate change mitigation and adaption actions; rural infrastructural development, fragmentation of value chains and farmers’ societies; value addition to increase shelf life of agricultural products; universal crop and livestock insurance; promotion of agroecological farming practices, including agroforestry; involvement of youths in agricultural practices through government-supported initiatives; systematic improvement of policies toward a stronger policy framework to regulate imports and maximize exports; empowering populations on the need to consume local foods; engagement in consumer protection initiatives as important for enhanced food production in a changing environment.

1. Introduction

Climate change is an evolving concept with future significance across all sectors [1]. The vulnerable sectors include but are not limited to the following viz.; transport, agriculture, water, health, education, etc. as examined by [2, 3, 4, 5, 6], respectively. According to the food and agriculture organization [7], Food systems (FS) encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products that originate from agriculture, forestry or fisheries, and parts of the broader economic, societal and natural environments in which they are embedded. In this regard, food systems are characterized by drivers that are environmental or biophysical and/or socioeconomic in nature, anchored on the three pillars of sustainable development. The food systems should have the ability to address the four dimensions of food security namely availability, access, stability, and utilization [8].

The need for proper food systems is in view of the increasing demand for sustainable healthy diets across the globe amidst the increasing population and consequently, the demand for healthy, accessible, and sustainable food. This food is part of a food system that can be affected by changes in biodiversity, climate, and many other global phenomena. This calls for the continuous need to establish evidence-based solutions to achieve resilient food systems through approaches, such as ensuring that there is enough food for everyone, there is access to a healthy diet, a fair food system, and a future-proof planet [9].

Challenges in the food system that calls for the need for food systems transformation have been studied globally. Studies by Dinesh et al. [10] implemented a theory of change geared toward transforming food systems under a changing climate. The study identified focal actions for food systems transformation that include empowering women, youths, consumer and farmer’s organizations; acceleration of digitally facilitated climate services; adoption of climate-smart agriculture and technology; financial innovativeness in agricultural investments; reshaping supply chains, policies, and institutions; defragmentation in knowledge and food security.

Cascading these findings into implementable frameworks still faces challenges in the wake of different perspectives of governance among countries and weak policies and institutions [11]. In general, actions to transform food systems have been reported and summarized in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Actions to transform food systems [12].

The systems approach is a current debate in food systems transformation where all food system drivers are considered in every stage of agricultural food systems [13]. Decisions and practices that maximize synergies among the drivers and minimize trade-offs are better suited for sustainable agricultural production [14].

The insurgency of pandemics, including COVID-19 further raises the need for resilient, sustainable, and inclusive food systems to realize sustainable development goals. The food system entails all the processes through which food goes from production to consumption and is composed of inputs, production, processing, retail, marketing, and consumption. The food system also includes external factors that influence them, such as policies, environment, economic and sociocultural factors. It is characterized by a system approach where all relevant factors and actors are considered in all activities that guide food production, access, stability, and utilization.

There are many reasons why we need to change the current food systems. One out of every three people suffers from malnutrition, at least 794 million people suffer from hunger, 2 billion people do not have sufficient access to vitamins and minerals for sufficient growth and development while 1.9 billion people overeat of which 600 million of those people are obese. As a result, more people suffer from conditions, such as type 2 diabetes associated with nutritional conditions [15]. Billions of people consume food too rich in fat, sugar, salt, and meat that impacts on health and the environment, for example, by being a risk factor to heart deceases and high greenhouse emissions emanating from meat production. Lack of dietary diversity has also been observed in populations where 75% of food consumed across the globe comes from only 12 plants, including rice, corn, and wheat; and from five animal species, including cattle, chicken, and pigs. Studies have also observed that one-third of food produced across the globe is wasted even as pressure on natural resources is increasing including dryness and pollution of sources of fresh water, 33% of soils are degraded, biodiversity is threatened as tropical forests are disappearing. This pressure is intensified by increasing climate variability and/or change. These limitations point out the need to transform the food system so that each step of the food system, including production, processing, distribution, consumption, should be adjusted to ensure healthier food to growing populations while reducing the environmental impact and food wastage [16]. Empowering people to eat local food thereby supporting the food growers in each country is a challenge that will cut off so many habits and lifestyles from many people.

Developing countries, inability to add value to what has been produced to increase the shelf life of foods and make them available at off-seasons is one of the challenges alongside infrastructural issues which is the responsibility of governments and needs a collective responsibility to solve them.

Africa is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change associated with multiple biophysical, socioeconomic, and political stresses that interact to reduce the region’s adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change mediated environmental hazard risks [17]. Climate change can significantly impact both rural and urban food systems by being attributed to conditions that spoil food, disrupt food production and transport processes, and therefore contribute to high market prices for food among populations.

Kenya is composed of a population of 57.57 million people [18], an increase from 40.9 million people in the year 2009. Out of this population, at least 14,461,521 people live in urban centers representing a 4.1% increase from 2018. In a population of at least 7 million people under 5 years; 1.8 million have been identified with cases of malnutrition with an increasing decease burden of diabetes mellitus among Kenyans. Increasing cases of drought-induced food insecurity have been documented with at least 2,147,889 Kenyans in need of immediate food assistance in the year 2021 [19]; even as increasing cases of obesity have been observed with a prevalence rate of 60.3% among urban residents and 19.5% among rural residents. An estimated 99 kilograms of food is discarded by every Kenyan annually with an annual country-wide food wastage of 5.2 million tonnes [20]. Climate change is equally evident in Kenya with widespread impacts that include enhanced drought and flood events [21]. Consequently, there are limitations of the Kenyan food system that point out the need for transformation. Figure 2 shows the interrelationship between various components of a food system and how they interact with each other.

Figure 2.

Relationships between components of a food system.

2. Enhancing food systems in Kenya

The food system approach can help in integrating all actors and players in the government of Kenya on a common platform that enables all stakeholders involved to have or benefit from sustainable production systems. This will not only benefit the current generations but the future as we save our planet from the adverse effects of climatic shocks. Poor soil management, such as excessive use of inorganic fertilizer, leads to soil degradation, thus affecting the quality and quantity of food produced. This, in turn, affects the availability of food and also leads to socioeconomic distress where small-scale farmers are not able to break even.

The Kenyan Food system is married by challenges that include rural to urban migration of energetic and potentially food-producing population, high poverty levels among smallholder food producers that may not afford firm inputs, socioeconomic inequalities, cheap food imports at the expense of local production, low-quality seeds sneaking in their way to farmers and increasing impacts of climate variability and/or change.

According to a food systems analysis by Wagengen Centre for Development, the following key themes identified in Nigeria can be applied in Kenya to achieve resilient food systems namely transforming the agricultural sector; employment of youth and women; access to finance; climate change adaptation and mitigation; agribusiness, value chain development, and logistics. Figure 3 shows a Food Systems Decision Support Tool (FSDS) developed by KIT and Wagengen Economic Research to provide a scan of the food system and identify leverage points to inform policy recommendations for the Dutch Government. The tool consists of seven steps namely defining the policy objectives, mapping the agro-food system relevant to these policy objectives, identifying the causal processes underlying the agrifood system, determining archetypes in system behavior of the agro-food system, identifying actionable leverage points within the agro-food system, defining relevant actors and their influence and interest to address leverage points, based on leverage points, policy objectives and relevant actors and provide policy recommendation.

Figure 3.

Food systems decision support tool.

We use the FSDS to determine the SDG-guided objectives for transforming the Kenyan food systems and determine the indicators, trade-offs, and synergies for their sustainability.

The food system in Kenya is identifiable with different drivers that are interrelated, as shown in Figure 4. Institutionalization is characterized by the development of institutional infrastructure and mandates that enhance the strengthening of legal and policy frameworks, including their implementation for sustainable development. The process of institutionalization in Kenya is married with challenges that include lack of policies for universal agricultural funding; lack of unitary or stronger farmer organizations, weak policies for protecting consumers and markets, and lack of universal crop and livestock insurance.

Figure 4.

Interrelationship between different drivers and outcomes of a Kenyan food system.

The uptake of scientific and technological information has remained relatively low compared to developed countries with inadequate access to agricultural advisory and information for enhanced agricultural productivity alongside lack of tools and even platforms that accelerate productivity and sales of farm produce coupled with weak digital and mapping infrastructure for agricultural decision-making.

High-interest rates and cheap imports have jeopardized agricultural productivity in Kenya even as urban demand for food is continuously increasing while young people of potential productivity migrate from rural to urban areas limiting agricultural production in rural areas. Further, the agricultural productivity in Kenya is greatly compromised by poor rural infrastructure [22].

Economic inequality has characteristically led to food consumption preferences among the urban and rural populations where rural populations have preferred traditional food supplies while urban ones manufactured food whose utilization has been poor in dietary diversity and precursors for malnutrition and obesity [15].

Increasing climate change as an environmental driver further impacts agricultural productivity through an erratic climate that compromises the sustainability of crops and livestock reducing food production and leading to food insecurity [23, 24]. The environmentally mediated socioeconomic impacts further increase the overall vulnerability of the agricultural communities to disaster risks associated with the environment and other drivers [25]. There is, therefore, the need for deliberate efforts to integrate climate change mitigation with agricultural practices alongside climate change adaptation activities for enhanced food production in Kenya.

3. Conclusions

The study examined challenges that can be addressed to enhance the Kenyan agricultural productivity that includes fragmented market and value chains and small regionally separated farmer groups and organizations; slow digital technology uptake; infrastructural challenges; science and technology challenges; market changes that can be associated with various habits, such as cravings for imported food and outcomes that include socioeconomic and environmental factors. The environmental factors include increasing climate variability and/or climate change.

The study observed that there is a need to defragment value and market chains and farmer organizations; enhance digital infrastructure and data sharing platforms for agricultural marketing and decision-making; accelerate rural infrastructural development, practice value addition of agricultural products to increase their quality and shelf life; involve youths in agricultural practices and decisions; Involve in agroecological practices; provide universal crop and livestock insurance; develop a stronger policy framework to regulate imports and maximize exports; empower Kenyans on the need to consume local foods; engage in initiatives for consumer protection and upscale climate change mitigation and adaptation actions.