A Success Story of Organizing Small Scale Farmers in Kenya: It’s Possible Replication for the Payment of Environmental services?

Abstract

The hypothesis of this article is that managing agricultural landscapes for reducing greenhouse gas emissions as a Payment for Environmental Services mechanism (PES) will be of major significance after the 2012 Kyoto Protocol era. The large number of small scale farmers in developing countries, and not least in Africa South of Sahara (SSA), will through this system get an opportunity for a triple win situation: contributing to national development, environmental protection and enhancing their own livelihoods. The big problem of relying on small scale farmers is organizing them to ensure service provisions that live up to the requirements of endurance, additionality and reliability. The Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) for over almost 50 years has been successful in integrating 600,000 smallholders in tea production making tea number one income earner in Kenya, and enhancing the livelihoods of the involved contract growers. This article argues that lessons should be learned from the success of KTDA when trying to replicate the organizational model for other crops, but not least in PES schemes. The article emphasizes vertical integration and production diversification, enabling market conditions, and democratization as the main factors in KTDA's success. This could possibly be replicated when promoting small scale farmers participating in the post-Kyoto carbon trade and other PES schemes.