Using local knowledge to understand challenges and opportunities for enhancing agricultural productivity in Western Kenya

Despite agriculture being the backbone of the economy in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), it is expected that farm sizes will continue to decrease due to customary inheritance and a threshold will be reached, if not already, in terms of farms being able to meet livelihood needs (Conelly and Chaiken, 2000; Waithaka et al., 2006; Masters et al., 2013; Öborn et al., 2015). Studies have shown that food security (in terms of quantity and quality of food) can be seriously jeopardized when farm sizes are too small to meet household needs (Conelly and Chaiken, 2000). According to Waithaka et al. (2006), there appears to be a minimum threshold of 0.4 ha (land area needed being dependent on household size), below which it becomes impossible for households to satisfy their dietary needs from subsistence agriculture alone.