Effects of changes in agricultural land use practices on household food security in Bureti sub-county, Kenya

Abstract

Shortage of food in the world today has resulted from changes in agricultural land use practices among other factors including climate change, population growth and urbanization. In Kenya, over the past four decades there has been reducing number of people practicing agriculture in the country. Though agriculture is the main economic activity in the country, the increasing population and human settlement into the agricultural regions has led to the sub-division of the rural agricultural land. The farm sizes became uneconomic and productivity declined. The focus of this study was to analyze changes in agricultural land use practises and their impacts on household food security between 2006 and 2015 in Bureti Sub-county. Cross sectional research designs including qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in the study. Kapkatet and Tebesonik locations were purposely sampled as the study areas in Bureti Sub-county. Multi-stage sampling was used to identify respondents in the study area. The main research instruments were questionnaires for households and key informants. The results from this study showed that there was increased land for farming activities including food crop cultivation (11.9%) and cash crops cultivation (11.4%) between the year 2006 and 2015. Household size was found to be the main cause of changes in food crops and mixed farming land uses (16.0% and 66% respectively). Households in the study area were found to be food accessible (67.5%). In addition, the respondents were of the opinion that the quality of soil (70.7%) and high rainfall (86.1%) in Bureti sub-County influence household food security. The study recommended that there should be intensive household mixed farming, more agricultural extension services and formulation of policies favouring small scale farming.