Kenya’s Unga Revolution: Protesting rising food prices

As Kenya today celebrates Madaraka Day, yesterday’s street events, dubbed ‘Unga Revolution’, should be a reminder to the government that this phenomenon is not over.

Things aren’t working in the food sector and there are serious underlying currents that should not be underestimated by any concerned citizen. This is not the first time Kenyans are coming out to express their concerns on the escalating costs of living. At least these were speaking for the silent majority.

But globally, concern is being expressed on the increasing cost of basic commodities. The world appears headed for major food crises if attention is not focused on the stable foods and the high demanding agricultural productive sectors that link with these sectors.

In developing and fragile states like Kenya, there is call for shifting attention towards addressing the concerns of those who have been assumed for a long time and their role in economic development – the peasants, the small farmers, the pastoralists, the landless and the peasant fisheries. This is a local productive sector and population that has been assumed and the role they could play in mitigating the harsh economic conditions through small-scale food production.

Assumedly, half of the world population are in this category and they grow almost over 60 per cent of the world's food. But how many governments care about how they produce foodstuffs? What support and incentives do they have to grow these foods? Who even classifies what they have and the facilities or equipment they need to boost their small productions that can cushion the high costs of living?

Increasingly there is a shift to focus on climate change and the effects this is having on food production globally. While this focus is real and life threatening, humanity all over was creative enough to develop mechanisms for survival when faced with these kind of harsh realities. The harsh environments did not mean the end of livelihoods although humanity suffered.

Creativity, support, innovations and inventions all over the world happened during times of hardships. This is what the Kenyan government needs to appreciate and put measures in place urgently, mobilising and engaging the stakeholders involved.

In rural Kenya, for instance in Ukambani, there is very little visibility on the public scene on what happens there, in terms of food production and the challenges small-scale farmers face. The rain-fed agriculture has become a nightmare to all. The peasant farmers are always being looked down on and often considered ignorant, backward or underdeveloped, with very little or no government support. When the rains fail as they will always do, the option is only drought, famine, starvation and relief food, but for how long?

The contempt peasant and small scale farmers face might be seen in lighter ways but seen in the macro-perspective, it is a big a challenge to the entire world. The much-glorified large-scale farming so far has not been the answer to feed the ever urbanising population that is largely less involved in food production but consumption.

While liberalisation has caught up with everyone, there haven’t been enough mechanisms put in place to manage the huge demands it has come up with. The free-market policies in force have favoured the plantation owners who target the large markets and always shift with the market and where the money is, with the big economies ending up demanding and paying for more to ensure food sustainability.

With governments having liberalised food production, progressively there has been almost a disappearance of peasants' and small-scale agriculture in most of the developing economies. What happens when peasants and small-scale farmers can’t afford the farm equipment and supplements with which they are supposed to compete equally with the corporations?
Further, in the most recent Human Rights Council session it was interesting to note that globally there is disagreement on the use of the word ‘peasant’. This was seen as a politically sensitive issue and many actors preferred the use of ‘people working in rural areas’. But who are these people? What makes their economy and livelihood to be called people working in rural areas? This tells you the dilemma the world has got itself in on politically weighty matters, affecting the large number of people whose business or work has largely remained outside the liberalised economy.

So what is happening in the streets of Nairobi, as they will happen anywhere else, should be seen in a wider context. The economic patterns for the last two decades have seen the peasants, the landless people and the small-scale farmers being pushed to the wall. They are slowly being forced to organise themselves and reclaim their right to livelihoods, right to survival and to defend small-scale agriculture and to have their voices heard at all levels.

As the search for answers to the escalating food crisis, Kenyans should not feel alone on this war. The recognition of peasants and small-scale food producers is a global search and the international farmer’s movement Via Campesina has been in this for a while uniting at the global level and through national organisations, unions and individuals that have been active for years in the fight for human dignity around the right to food and food sovereignty. The movement held the International Day of Peasants' Struggles on 17 April 2011.

With the increasing number of hungry people in the world, the tide is slowly starting to turn and the promises that large-scale plantations and productions would feed the world appear somehow doomed and a fiction. More and more people, governments and institutions are recognising that there will be no solution to the current food crisis without the participation of the peasants and small-scale farmers.

The big questions is whether the Kenyan government will change tact and ensure the peasants’ and small-scale farmers are supported with equipment, skills, facilities, capital and all other facilities towards sustainable food production, even with a climate change focus?

It is time we moved and had sustainable agriculture in Kenya with the clarity that local food productions and markets have showed a remarkably positive impact on climate and climate changes with people’s survival when they have happened. This is the very basic struggle for food, land, economic opportunities and human rights, with innovations and creativity for survival required.

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