POLICY OPTIONS FOR ENHANCED ACCESS TO AGRICULTURAL LAND FOR MIGRATING YOUTH IN DENSELY POPULATED RURAL KENYA
Abstract
The participation of youths in agriculture in Kenya has been low leading to migration to urban areas
where the youths expect to get better jobs in non-farm sector. They thus earn low incomes and
experience increasing poverty, social and economic exclusion, and increased risk of political tensions.
We carried out a study to identify the drivers of youth migration in densely populated areas of rural
Kenya using panel data of 500 youths for the period 2007 to 2014 and an additional 115 sample cross
sectional data of 2015 which was analyzed to describe he individual, household and community level
variables using the probit model. The results established that 60 percent of youths migrated between
2007 and 2015 and about 40% of the migrants move out of the farms. The main drivers of migration
from farming were gender, increasing age, population, production and village land rent. Migrating
youths earned low incomes and had no incentives to rent land. Their production levels were low and
had little asset based. To attract more youth to agriculture, requires a policy environment that
promotes that development of land and labor markets in the rural areas, training on skills and
increased investment for higher productivity.These will lead to increased access to land, education,
gender, farm assets wages and productivity hampered migration. The study concluded that agriculture
lack of an enabling investment environment drives the youths from agriculture. It is therefore
recommended that, for farming to attract more youths and support the growth of the agricultural
sector, policies should enable enhanced credit availability to catalyse access to production resources
and increased productivity in the sector. These will stem out migration of youths from the rural areas
address issues related to increased access to land, better education and increased returns on
investment in the agriculture sector.