Inspired by the Netflix documentary Rotten, this issue of Cha Kula by the Route to Food Initiative, highlights the absurdities in our food systems in Kenya, both historically and in the contemporary moment.
Cha Kula is a bi-annual publication that gives prominence to food as a political issue in Kenya. It calls into question the power dynamics that dominate our food system, which determines who eats, what they eat and who goes hungry.
The report “Toxic Business; Highly Hazardous Pesticides in Kenya” presents analyses on actual data of pesticides used in 2020 in Kenya. It shows that immediate action is necessary to protect human health, the environment, and the right to healthy food in Kenya.
The Route to Food Initiative, a program component of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, has launched a special edition of the Chakula Magazine, a graphic novel entitled “The Blind Spot.”
The Blind Spot brings to life the ways in which politics plays out in Kenya’s food system in the form of a visually compelling political drama set in a fictional future county called Kajibora. The main protagonist, Sifa, is a passionate young professor from the city who travels back to her hometown of Kajibora after the death of her grandfather, a renowned politician and leader of a famous peasant revolution. Upon her return, Sifa discovers that the post-revolutionary county is being taken over by a multinational industrial agribusiness company.
Kenya is a growing market for pesticides. According to the Agrochemical Association of Kenya (AAK), pesticide imports more than doubled between 2015 and 2018. Sales data shows that 76 percent of the total volume of pesticides used in the country contain one or more active ingredients that are categorized as Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs). Pesticides are classified as highly hazardous if they pose serious health risks or irreversible damage to the environment. Their potential to cause cancer, disrupt hormonal and nervous systems, lead to genetic defects or harm unborn children, are among the list of human health concerns being raised by civil society organizations.
It is possible to create sustainable, just and healthy food systems. For this to happen, it is key to strengthen political structures that truly focus on the right to food, on healthy nutrition, and on protecting biodiversity and the climate.
The publication Meat Atlas sheds light on the impacts of meat and dairy production, and aims to catalyse the debate over the need for better, safer and more sustainable food and farming.
The idea of growth as the way to end poverty and escape economic and financial crisis remains largely undisputed and is currently reflected in the concept of the green economy. But not everything that is “green” and efficient is also environmentally sustainable and socially equitable. This essay outlines a policy of less, of wealth in moderation, to enable the Earth’s resources to make a life of dignity and without need possible for all.
The study analysed the irrigation expansion strategy as a measure of increasing food security and securing livelihoods in Kenya, as well as its role as a measure to climate change adaptation in relation to other measures e.g. selection of crop varietal suitability, environmental conservation through afforestation, agro forestry and land use management and practices.
One of the biggest challenges predicted to affect food security in Africa is climate change. Due to the fact that 95 percent of Africa’s agriculture is rainfed, the already fragile agricultural sector is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Highertemperatures and an increased frequency of extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, eventually lead to a decline in agricultural output.
A maize shortage has led to an unprecedented price hike in Kenya; government has declared the food insecurity a national disaster. Many Kenyans attribute food price inflation to mismanagement and corruption. But to what extent does it result from actual scarcity? Do food crop producers - many of them small farmers - profit from high food prices?
