Identification of Land Quality Indicators (LQIs) is a key requirement of sustainable land management. They are required to assess, monitor, and evaluate changes in the quality of land resources and environmental impacts. The Land Quality Indicator (LQI) program monitors the environment and the sector performance of managed ecosystems. The program is being developed on a national and regional scale, but it is also part of a larger global effort to improve natural resource management. The LQI program recommends addressing issues of land management by agroecological zones.

Overview of a conceptual definition or sustainable land management policies

Agriculture is the backbone of Kenya’s economy. Agriculture in Kenya is characterized by low productivity due to low external inputs, lack of good farming practices, soil erosion, and other losses. In most farming regions of the country, agriculture depends entirely on rainfall which sometimes is scarce. The problem of selecting the correct land for the cultivation of certain crops is a long-standing and mainly empirical issue. The objective of this study is to extrapolate and generate a crop suitability map showing areas suitable for agricultural activities in Taita Hills in Kenya.

The Cadastral system in Kenya was established in 1903 to support land alienation for the white settlers who had come into the country in the early part of the 20th Century. In the last hundred years, the system has remained more or less the same, where land records are kept in paper format and majority of operations are carried out on a manual basis. The lack of a modern cadastral system has contributed to problems in land administration in the country.

Kenya is going through a period of intense transition. The country's main development policy, Vision 2030, is just entering the second Medium Term Plan of Implementation from 2013. The development priorities focus extensively on large scale investments, for industrial, irrigated agriculture, utilization of newly discovered natural resources, and infrastructure development. Land is therefore a central commodity for realization of the sought after socioeconomic transformation.