In Africa today, in the Machakos region of Kenya, and in other districts, communities are implicating strategies to improve agriculture, business and industry through intelligent and educated planning. While increases in population have complicated the development of this continent, they have also brought the means for changes and innovations that have aided its development. By promoting educational programs, providing investment strategy and aid, using Eco-agricultural practices and innovations, and new technologies, these nations hope to supply their population with the necessary resources to keep it within it’s carrying capacity. Thus population growth can improve the quality of African lands.
Many economists see growing population density as the limiting factor for economic development. The African economic situation has inspired a resurgence of neo-Malthusian thought, and associates high levels of fertility with low levels of development and poverty. (Gould, p.248) However, there are those, like economists Mary Tiffen, Michael Mortimore, and Ester Boserup, who believe places like Machakos have benefited agriculturally, economically, and ecologically by implementing strategies devised by investment organizations and the local communities to deal with their population density problem. Boserup considered population growth as a positive and independent factor in African rural development, in particular that it could be a prime cause of agricultural intensification. (Gould, p.248) Population density in this sense aims to help the development of land and community. By reducing population fertility rates and worker mobility, and promoting agricultural and ecological intensification techniques, and developing infrastructure, Africans hope to stabilize their economy. The more efficiently they adapt and develop their strategies the better off they will be.
"The situation however, could become even worse as attempts to grow more food damage the land itself. As available land and water supply per capita decrease, farmers struggling increasingly for survival overcultivate, degrading soils; overgraze, turning rangelands into deserts; and overcut forests…." (Green, p.7-8)
In Machakos, at the beginning of Tiffen and Mortimores’ study period, farming to produce more than subsistence needs was not profitable in most parts. (Tiffen, p.265) The land in Kenya, where Machakos is located, is semi-arid. This means much of the land is too dry to cultivate unless intensification-farming practices are implemented to improve the soil quality, water content, and reduce erosion. In Machakos, the current farming systems are more sustainable than their predecessors were. Local farmers are conserving soil and water, and growing better, higher value crops. But their struggle to adapt has required more than just changes in farming techniques. Technical and economic improvements through soil fertility maintenance, land terracing, the adoption of hybrid strains of crops and increasing use of natural and commercial fertilizers, areas strained by population density, have raised their carrying capacities. In Machakos, working with foreign investment strategists, receiving aid and directional support, they have developed the infrastructure to expand on the economic market.
"Technology development and responses to market opportunities also depend on security to reap the fruits of investment particularly, in agriculture, on security of land tenure, but also more generally, on security and freedom to travel and to seek out information and new opportunities." (Tiffen, p.264)
If the government, the NGO’s, and local commons organizations do not work together with the local farmers, then increasing population density will lead to major sustainability complications and consequences and land degradation. Individual farming investors require community district and national complementary investments to realize their full potential. (Tiffen, p.1006)
Government actions are essential to the development of a nation since they can impede or promote development through regulations, restrictions, and investments. In Africa, the government’s investment plan can be broken down into four policies. The first policy is the need to facilitate family farm investment through the incentive of profit. The second policy emphasizes the importance of circulation of information on markets, technology, and in finance and management to promote outside investment. Third, the government has encouraged domestic farmers to save, reducing the inherent risks of farming semi-arid lands, and better preparing them for any unanticipated exogenous and external complications. The fourth point highlighted in the government investment strategy is to help provide security for investments, particularly for those fixed in the land, either through recognizing the evolution of tenurial customs or by a carefully considered, once only, tenurial reform. (Tiffen, p.1006-1007)
With the aid of the government to develop more efficient transportation networks and roads, the agricultural market can deliver it’s product to consumers faster, and more efficiently. The development of the transportation system will also make the workforce more mobile. People will be able to travel and communicate with greater ease, further developing the economy through network and trade relations.
In Machakos, continued efforts to adapt and encourage self-help through National Governing Organizations (NGO’s) and aid from investment sources like African Land Development (ALDEV), and the Machakos Integrated Development Program (MIDP) funded by the European Community Kenyans, they have increased agricultural output, education retention rates, and transformed the economy. From 1980-1985, 50 percent of new conservation programs in Kenya received investment assistance, 24 percent from the MIDP, 18 percent from Swedish programs, and 12 percent from the Catholic Diocese.(Tiffen, p.1001) The MIDP provided expenditures in part through the provision of tools, and advise to groups of farmers who practiced conservative farming measures.
Machakos farmers along with the investing organizations, and government have directed these investments into several different areas to promote economic and agricultural growth. Investing in farming intensification techniques like terracing, planting trees, putting up fences, constructing buildings, cultivating livestock, purchasing equipment to cultivate and process, and increasing workers capital, they diversified their investments.(Tiffen, p.1000)
Terracing the land, is a conservation measure where farmers bench the land, retarding erosion, conserving water, a producing better crop yield. This technique allows farmers to cultivate semi-arid lands that were previously not farmable. It also shortens the crop season, allowing the farmers to have multiple crops in a year, further increasing their yield. While the initial labor costs of terracing the land are heavier because it is a labor-intensive project, the long term results and profit offset that initial disincentive. By planting trees, soil retention and quality are improved, and a source of fuel is created. By putting up fences they formalize land boundaries and create the necessary means for livestock cultivation, and private land holdings. Constructing new buildings creates the infrastructure for surpluses to be stored and processed, and centers from which these products can be transported to external markets. By cultivating livestock, they take on greater risk, but diversify their agricultural industry, and market a higher priced commodity. Finally, in Machakos, they have invested in workers capital.
More intensive cultivation and farming practices require more stable and secure tenured workers. For this to occur, workers need their rights to be better secured, and incentive to settle and remain under the employment of local farms. If they receive the necessary incentives, they will be encouraged to promote growth and create new farming technologies and strategies through adaptation and innovation.
"The solution to rural population pressure in Kenya seems to be not a matter of massive redistribution of people, though internal migration will certainly continue. It is rather a matter of socio-economic reorganization, agricultural intensification, and achievement of demographic control" (Bernard, 1982, p.155)
The Malthusian/Bosrupian debate argues that the intensification debate has been set too narrowly in the context of responses only in the farm economy. It needs also to consider the effects of circular migration and the weakening of inter-generational relationships and wealth flows that have necessitated a reappraisal of the value of children and the costs of their education. (Gould, p.260)
Worker mobilization and migration is a significant factor that leads to high fertility levels in Africa. Cleveland (1991) argued that migration increases fertility since it removes constraints on the main proximate determinants – the length of post-partum abstinence is reduced, age at marriage for women is reduced and remittances make it easier for young men to marry. (Gould, p.262) In Africa, the most critical aspect of the population-environment relationship, and the most important mechanism for sustaining the economy of the province, has been in the past, and to the present remains, migration. (Gould, p. 254) Thus encouraging individuals to settle and build working relations in stable industries, which promotes stability in the economy has proven difficult.
The investment strategies of families and individuals also play an important role in the success of their regional strategy. Their savings and investments need to work with the overall greater goal of development. In Machakos the farmer’s long-term investments primarily go into three sectors, child education, non-farm businesses, and agricultural investments. In a sense they are diversifying their portfolio. By investing in their children’s education, the family will look for the child to enter the labor market in search for a decent paying job. In return for their investment in their child’s education, they expect a portion of that child’s paycheck. Investments in non-farm ventures allows the family to reap the benefits of other, higher growth business sectors where there are greater profit yields. Investment in other sectors of the economy stimulates further growth and increases the financial backing and stability of the community. Finally, Kenyan farmer’s long-term investments go into agricultural investments. By putting more money into their own farming ventures, they plan to secure greater profits, and increase their capital wealth and land value. By providing possibly better wages, conditions, tools or resources to the workers, they encourage workers to settle and reducing worker mobilization.
While the local farmer’s investment’s promote capital community growth, it is also important for the government to provide additional aid, because it is the investments of the government and supra-village organizations that ultimately determine the quality of the education provided.(Tiffen, p.1004) The improvements in educational programs leads to more technological improvements and innovations. By stimulating education, individuals who might formally have gone into minimum wage, farm labor are now being diverted into technical non-farm working sectors. These are sectors that will make up the necessary infrastructure for further development and trade expansion into trade the external markets. "Increases in population density decrease costs for per capita of other types of social and physical infrastructure. It means that an extension worker can visit more farmers per day, a shop will have the prospect of more local customers, people can be gathered more easily to build a community amenity, and news will spread faster."(Tiffen, p. 1004
Boserup saw increased population density as impelling intensification methodologies. (Boserup, 1965) While short term results through their investment strategies showed no great benefits, the long term benefits have been numerous. Technological development is linked to education in the widest sense of anything which improves knowledge and organizational capabilities.(Tiffen, p.264) By making cautious, educated and conservative investments, Machakos has improved that quality and extraction capabilities of their land. They have promoted the growth and need for further infrastructure and development and are "reaping the fruits of investment, particularly in agriculture, on security of land tenure, but also more generally on security and freedom to travel and to seek out information and new opportunities.
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