Local Cooperation Fund (LCF) in Kenya

General

The Kenya National federation of Agricultural Producers (KenFAP) is a non-political non-profit making and democratic member-based umbrella organization of all farmers in Kenya. It represents the interests of about 2 million farm families and the agricultur e sector in general. It is the legitimate farmers' voice with the objective of articulating issues affecting them through focused lobby and advocacy targeted capacity building and promotion of sector stakeholders' cohesiveness in dispensing and progressive uptake of agricultural innovations for enhanced socio-economic status of the farmers.The smallholder farmers in Kenya continue to remain trapped in poverty hunger and malnutrition due to lack of sustainable livelihood mechanisms at their disposal. They ar e relatively a marginalized group whose right to quality and nutritious food all the time good health and clothing remains compromised. Poverty is both a social and a human right issue. The production and marketing functions of agricultural commodities are also affected by land degradation due to over usage of the land parcels high cost and overly inaccessible inputs inferior planting materials low prices at farm gate level and lack of market information to the producers. Women and the youth participation i n agriculture is limited as the ownership of most of factors of production is by men. Women and the youth are not involved in decisions making processes. This is a social concern as well as a development concern owing to the fact that most often the two gr oups are the ones left to perpetuate life in future generations. There is need to have the youth and women to be part of planning and implementing development initiatives hence equal access to productive resources by all. Sensitization on human rights is l eft to the human rights organizations which are not sector specific. They are general and not detailed. Kenyan governance has been devolved in view of the Kenya constitution 2010. That brings closer to the rural community the opportunities for having their concerns addressed. However real time to articulate those rights violation levels proper packaging and communication of the concerns considerably lacks among the farming community. As such the agricultural communities need to be informed on their fundamen tal sector specific inherent rights to be able to effectively make the rightful decisions and actions.