Land right as a critical factor in donor agricultural investments: Constraints and opportunities for YieldWise in Kenya’s mango value chain
This article (PDF) by Landesa provides an overview of the land tenure situation concerning Kenyan mango farmers. The two main issues raised are the risks born of the tenure insecure situations of women and youth. Because women and youth lack secure land and tree right, they are not able to fully engage in agricultural productivity and value chain enhancement projects. Women’s access to land may vary for instance based on marital status and family composition, which effects her ability to make decisions, confidence in long-term investments and ability to access credit. Youth likewise face constraints to engaging in agricultural interventions. Yet the youth are often the best candidates to uptake innovative new practices and support the long-term sustainability of interventions. Recommendation to engage women are to set guidelines for inclusion, enhance direct access of women to farmland through purchase or lease and increase efforts to ensure meaningful participation and benefit by women farmers through sensitization, training, and capacity building on women’s land rights. To engage youth, guidelines should be set as well. Youth should be assisted to purchase or lease-in land for farming outside of family land, expand youth engagement throughout the value chain and promote youth access to land and tree ownership through collaborative youth-oriented land rights advocacy and educational campaign. Another issue raised it that access to credit using land as collateral is not straightforward. It is recommended to work together with banks to design “alternative” lending products more suitable to smallholder farmers. Lending to groups of farmers could prove much safer then lending to individuals.