Project Publications

We publish our findings in the relevant professional and academic journals and plan a series of meetings with local organizations and district and regional authorities. We believe that our approach has something to offer not just for Kenya but for Africa as a whole.

  • 2021, Almekinders, C., Hebinck, P., Marinus, W., Kiaka, R. and Waswa, W. Why farmers grow so many maize varieties in West Kenya. Outlook on Agriculture, 50 (4): 406-418; https://doi.org/10.1177/00307270211054211

This article reflects on the discussions as to whether breeding and seed system development should proceed along its current well established route of developing varieties with a higher agricultural productivity or if the diversity of farmers, their contexts and rationales requires broader approaches. We make use of data from a recently held survey (2018) in West Kenya. The data show that some 80% of the households in the survey planted both local and hybrid maize varieties. The choices that people make about which variety to plant are many. Apart from rainfall, the availability of cash, the promise of a good yield, the presence of projects and programs and the culture of seed also influences these choices. We argue that an inclusive demand-oriented maize breeding and seed system needs to include a range of varieties and seed sources and to develop and support different delivery pathways to fit farmers’ diverse use of seeds and varieties. Our findings also indicate the need for more systematic study of the diversity of farmers’ rationales and the performance of crop varieties. This would provide useful information for all the actors involved.

  • Forthcoming 2022, Paul Hebinck and Richard Kiaka, Enacting indigenous and green revolutions in maize in West Kenya, in Rachel Weinberg (eds.) Seed and Knowledge Justice for Agroecology: Critical African Perspectives, Practical Action Publishers, pp.

Maize has become an important staple food crop in West Kenya. Today many ‘local’ and ‘modern’ varieties are grown and consumed, often in combination. We associate these maize varieties with the enactment of two structurally different agrarian revolutions: an indigenous agricultural revolution that inspires a form of agroecology by default, and the green revolution that promotes modern farming with commoditised inputs. We explore the impact of both through a grounded approach that incorporates the ‘lived experiences’ of those who enact maize farming. We show that they continuously shift between autonomous farming and commoditised forms of farming. Maize growers regularly make choices that take cognizance of the opportunities offered, but also pragmatically balance their interpretations of risk and rapidly changing circumstances. The way maize is enacted in West Kenya triggers our sociological imagination and defies many received wisdoms about farming. Central to our approach is that we do not explore the contribution of the green revolution as disconnected from the enactment of local maize. But we also need to be critical about the nature of the interaction between two agrarian revolutions and whether they shape one another.

This thesis explores the practices of peasant farmers in maize cultivation in situations of increased maize technological interventions or deterritorialisation forces in Yala area, western Kenya where majority of the inhabitants are the Luo ethnic group. Maize is a staple crop in Kenya, a crop that is not indigenous to Africa but was introduced from the New world and America from the sixteenth century and eventually found its way in Luoland and Yala area. Yala area has been home to many interventions since the colonial times towards Green revolution. The farmers have been provided with a range of hybrid maize varieties, inorganic fertilizers and trainings on how to apply the hybrid maize technology for increased yields but at the same time the farmers have not been disembedded from the use local resources such ‘local’ maize varieties or nyaluo maize and manure for soil replenishment. The farmers’ practices are varied, and they variously interact with the deterritorialisation forces such as the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) and One Acre Fund (OAF) as well as to each other in complex ways that do not warrant categorization. The peasant maize cultivation in Yala is characterised by heterogeneous elements and multiple, complex relations and practices that are continuously in flux.

  • 2018, Kimanthi, H. and P. Hebinck., ‘Castle in the sky’: The anomaly of the millennium villages project fixing food and markets in Sauri, western Kenya. Journal of Rural Studies 57, 157-170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.12.019

Millennium Villages Project (MVP) was implemented in various villages across sub-Saharan African countries to catalyse the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and provide evidence of step-wise societal transformation by 2015. This paper critically analyses from an assemblage perspective the MVP’s ‘quick win’ strategy to achieve the MDGs with a focus on the implementation of agricultural interventions and their impacts on the socio-technical fabric in Sauri Millennium Village (SMV) in western Kenya. Our anatomy of MVP highlights that MVP is a continuation of a decades-long of development approaches that sets out to fix development. Analysis of our qualitatively collected longitudinal data show that the SMV was blind to individual and collective forms of agency and heterogeneity among the social actors; hence grassroots corruption, elite capture of agricultural inputs, injury of social relations and exacerbation of the existing inequalities within the community. It spawned tensions and suspicions within the community. The farmers reworked the introduced ideas and technologies to fit to their needs and actively engaged with their own locally produced and exchanged resources. Typical for SMV was also an extremely questionable style of reporting that hid its achievements and failures from the general public. The “Big Promise” that MVP would deliver did not materialise; it simply failed to achieve its objectives and was unable to learn from previous interventionist strategies, it fractured communities and faded into oblivion.

This paper explores the claim whether agro-forestry is a second soil fertility paradigm. The answer to this question, however, is not unequivocal. Farmers in Western Kenya generally do not apply fertiliser and rather rely on many soil fertility replenishment (SFR) strategies. Scientists recognised that lowering the costs of restoring fertility is vital to the future of agriculture in the region and beyond. Agroforestry emerged as an alternative strategy to replenish soil fertility and has been introduced through various programmes and institutions in Western Kenya since the early 1990s. Detailed field and case studies show that people are indeed convinced that agro-forestry helps them to replenish soil fertility and that over the years yields indeed have increased. The paper also traces the emergence of localised practices (niches) of soil fertility management. These niches stand for local ways of reproducing soil fertility. These practices coexist with improved fallows, and mutually transform each other through various kinds of interactions at field and village level as well as with technology institutions. Together they reflect the diversified soil fertility options that resonate well with the multiple nature of nutrient and other soil constraints. Low-cost technologies for supplying nutrients to crops are needed on a scale wide enough to improve the livelihood of farmers. The aim of the paper is to show whether and how externally induced improved fallow innovations resonate with farmer-produced niches in the domain of SFR in Luoland. The paper contributes in this way to a more appropriate understanding of socio-technical innovations.

The chapter explores the cultural embeddednes of seed practices to explain why in Luo Land, Wes Kenya local varieties maize sustain the test of time despite massive interventions to insure the adoption of modern varieties. We explore the cultures of seed as heterogeneous and fragmented practices that are constituted by an assemblage of different seed and land related practices. These do not stand on their own but are also shaped and structured by what we conceptualise as socio-technical networks. The agency that constitutes these assemblages is located in the social actors that are involved (farmers, intervening agents) and their various knowledge repertoires and experiences. This agency manifests as a specific grammar to socially defend and legitimise one’s choice of which maize to plant. The ‘grammar of maize’ contains specific clues and explanations why certain ‘local’ varieties are predominant in the landscape and are continuously enriched while new, ‘modern’ varieties are present to a much lesser extent. The agency cannot solely be attributed to social actors but lies also in the material objects, i.e. the various kinds of maize varieties and their specific bio-physical properties. The leitmotive of this chapter is to show underpin that culture stands for making the configuration of the interaction between the social and material work.

  • Kimanthi, H. (2014). Interlocking and distancing processes: An analysis of farmers’ interactions with introduced crop production technologies in Sauri Millennium Village, Kenya., Unpublished Master’s thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen.
  • 2008, Hebinck, Paul and Nelson Mango, Land and embedded rights: an analysis of land conflicts in Luoland, Western Kenya in: Abbink, J. and A.van Dokkum (eds.), Dilemmas of development: conflicts of interest and their resolutions in modernizing Africa, Leiden: African Studies Centre, pp. 39-60.

People’s relationships to land are in Kenya inherently contradictory, conflictive and confusing at the same time. Confusion and conflict is part of everyday life. Local people, state agencies and the elite alike position themselves differently in such conflicts. Whereas in the policy arena much emphasis is given to govern-ance issues (The Constitution of the Republic of Kenya, Constitution of Kenya Review Commission 2002), social movements such as the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) push for the enactment of relevant legislations to address the ambiguities of agrarian policies such as land-grabbing, land quarrels and land related ethnic clashes.2 KLA’s main focus is to curtail the practices of political elites that alien-ated public land for private purposes. The current land tenure policy debate in Kenya, however, stresses the solution of problems associated with its political system of patronage, rivalry and corruption. It tends to neglect the rather complex everyday life of land rights practices at the local level and the kind of conflicts that emerge from conflicting interpretations of land arrangements.

  • 2004, Mango, N and P. Hebinck, Cultural repertoires and socio-technological regimes: maize in Luoland, West Kenya in: Wiskerke, H. and J.D. van der Ploeg, J.D. (eds.), Seeds of Transition. Essays on novelty production, niches and regimes in agriculture, Assen, Royal Van Gorcum, 2004, pp. 285-319. https://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/wurpubs/fulltext/338824

This chapter explores the relationship between culture, markets, technology and agriculture. It will demonstrate the interfaces between the cultural repertoires of local people and the scientific repertoires of research institutions. In this chapter we seek to explain how local culture ‘reads’ local as well as scientific knowledge and new technologies (in this case the hybrid maize varieties and accompanying packages). We also explain how local culture forms part of a ‘defence line’ against the practices that are introduced and favoured by scientific knowledge. One major task is to explain why new maize varieties such as hybrids are no longer widely grown. Culture and kinship in particular shape agriculture to a large extent, and offer next to institutional issues of development, a contribution to such an explanation.

This thesis analyses processes of agricultural development and socio-technical change in western Kenya and in particular Siaya district. In the 1 6 t h century the ancestors of the Luo arrived in this part of the world from a mythical place called Agoro in Southern Sudan. Their first place of settlement was in Samia, a little west of what is now Siaya district. They later spread out to the savannah woodlands and to the plains along the shores of Lake Victoria establishing fortified villages. They gathered fruits and greens from the forests, hunted wild game in organised groups, planted sorghum and millets in small clearings, practised pastoralism and fishing in Lake Victoria. By the late 19t h century, the Luo were still planting sorghum and millet grains, but during the early 20t h century these were gradually and largely replaced by maize as the major crop. Luo agriculture saw major transformations in the years that followed. Agriculture gradually moved from shifting cultivation to fallow-based agriculture and later to a stage of permanent cultivation. The book narrates hwo the Luo responded by rejectign but also accomodating various kinds of interventions to transform their way of farming.

This paper maps out how kinship relations and customary law of the Luo of Western Kenya at present mediate people’s social relationships and attributes regarding land. Kinship relations represent what may be called general organizing principles of social life, or an ideology, and are interpreted here as intertwined with customary law. Customarily, land is regarded as being the inalienable property of the clan, to be inherited according to lineage membership. Fieldwork has revealed, however, that land issues are often surrounded by conflict and confusion. This can be partly explained by the fact that customary land tenure arrangements have been reshaped over the years by the introduction of private land ownership, which dates back to the colonial period, and more specifically to the Swynnerton Plan implemented since the 1950s. Land, customarily belonging to a lineage and given in usufruct to a lineage member, is now formally individual property. It is registered, and title deeds are issued according to modern state land laws. This has opened doors for the sale and the acquisition of land outside the realm of customary law, but if the ‘owner’ wishes to sell the land he still needs the consent of the council of village elders. Thus, a situation has evolved whereby customary and private land tenure arrangements are welded into the way the Luo deal with land, understand land issues and resolve conflicts over land. Currently, land conflicts take place in arenas where the two different systems of land tenure form the background for different positions and interpretations.

This chapter explores issues of technology and heterogeneity and will do so with reference to a recently developed framework to analyse the dynamics of technology development and design: socio-technical regimes. This concept evolved from the work of academics at technical universities in their attempt to understand technological change from a social science perspective. The usefulness of this concept will be probed with reference to maize and maize breeding. Empirically, the analysis is more specifically situated in Kenya, as are the political, technical and cultural choices actors make concerning which varieties to breed and produce.

Most farmers in Siaya District, Western Kenya, regard soil fertility decline as one of their priority problems. It results in low crop yield, poverty and malnutrition. This paper analyses how farming systems in Siaya District have evolved and resulted in environmental degradation, what farmers’ perceptions are of soil fertility decline and how they manage it. The paper concludes with an assessment of the potential of some new technologies. The farming system in Siaya has evolved from shifting cultivation via fallow-based farming to permanent agriculture, mainly due to increasing population pressure and market integration. Long fallow periods were used to regenerate the level of organic matter and nutrients, until increasing pressure on land reduced its potential. Thereafter, application of animal manure became the most important source for soil fertility amendment. However, due to the decline in cattle population quantities of manure produced have become insufficient for restoring soil fertility on all fields. Most farmers find inorganic fertiliser too expensive. The criteria that farmers use for judging that soil fertility is declining include reduced crop yields, change in soil colour, compacting of the soil, and the presence of certain weed species. They respond in various ways: parts of their land may be put into fallow for a period of at least six months; farmers also practise organic matter recycling, crop rotation, and crop associations. Soil and water conservation structures are established to avoid nutrient losses. More radical strategies include the development of low-lying, swampy land for growing high value vegetables or the search for off-farm employment. Technologies developed by research institutes focus on improved fallow systems and green manure with leguminous shrubs and herbs. First results show a great potential for restoring soil fertility and improving crop yields. Improved fallow is produced.

  • van Kessel, C. (1998). Adoption, adaptation, distancing and alternative networks. An analysis of farmers’ responses to a hybrid maize technology package in Yala division, western Kenya. Nijmegen: Unpublished M.A. Thesis. Dept. of Development studies. Nijmegen, Radboud University.
  • Mango, N. (1996). Farmers responses to the agrarian crisis in Siaya District, Kenya: an analysis of how farmers ‘internalise’ induced technology interventions in dairy farming. Wageningen: Wageningen University. Unpublished M.Sc. Thesis.
  • ??, Kimanthi, H., Sato, C. and Hebinck, P., Gender as an assemblage: Exploring the problem of gender categorization in food crop cultivation within the Millennium Villages Project site, western Kenya; resubmitted to World Development

Gender essentialism in development practice has been criticised for more than three decades with little effect. We use gender and intersectionality within the framework of assemblage to analyse the relations, practices, and intersections of both human and nonhuman elements within the context of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in Luoland in western Kenya. This framework permits us to tease-apart essentially categorised ‘women’ revealing changing dynamics of senior and junior women within the Luo polygamous homestead, dala, and their implication for food security within. This insight reveals the inadequacy of essentialising representations of Luo women and the relevance of their recognition as social beings who differently construct themselves and their actions, in interaction with both human and nonhuman elements. Gender and intersectionality from an assemblage perspective makes visible the involved human and nonhuman intersecting elements and the changing dynamics within an ongoing process in a specific socio-ecological context that better support development.

  • ?? Hebinck, P., H. Kimanthi and N. Mango, Maize histories in Luoland, West Kenya, submitted to the Journal of Eastern African Studies

This paper concerns maize histories in Luoland, Western Kenya. After being introduced from the new world from the 16th century onwards, maize proliferated quickly and evolved to become Africa’s staple food crop feeding people in the urban and rural domains. In this paper, we argue that the spread of maize is not a homogenous and linear process. The different maize varieties that mushroomed in Western Kenya laid the foundation for a plural economy and maize is not enacted uni-formally. Maize farming manifests practices that are underpinned by cultural repertoires and relationships with institutions and markets which leads us to distinguish ‘farming economically’ or ‘agroecology by default’ and ‘commoditized’ or high input agriculture. We trace the history from the arrival of the first maize varieties in Luoland by about the end of the 19th century till to date. We distinguish between local maize (also called Nyaluo) and modern hybrids and composites that are introduced by national and multilateral organizations and seed companies to replace the local maize varieties. We build on insights from longitudinal research to explain why Nyaluo continues to be grown to date, often in combination with the hybrids. One of the reasons being that Nyaluo circulates in locally nested relationships of production and exchange. In contrast to most studies on food security, we find, based on documenting the locally lived experiences that Nyaluo represents a relevant genetic resource enriched by farmers themselves in various ways.