Examining access to means of production was very significant in this study because it is what determines the bulk of all agricultural labour, the returns of the women's labour and decisions concerning the inputs essential for successful farming. For this reason, it became necessary to look at the factors that influence women in their agricultural production, among the, access to land, credit facilities, agricultural services and information and membership to cooperative societies.
Few studies in Kenya are focussed on women's land rights. However, Pala (1974) and (1983) has raised a number of questions concerning the issue. According to her, the traditional system of land tenure, provided both unmarried and married women with land user rights on land vested on her father's patrilineage and husband's patrilineage respectively. Customarily individuals (both men and women) had no right to allocate or dispose of land. Thus, access to land by women was ensured and they were entitled to land for agricultural purposes from which they were expected to feed their families (themselves, their children and spouses).
However, the Land Reform is transferring the customary land tenure system into individualized tenure. Since all Kenyan communities are patrilineal - that is women move into their husband's clan and use their husband's land, the `owner' of the land in individualized tenure automatically becomes the man. The inheritance of land runs from father to son. This means that land is being transferred to almost exclusively male individuals leaving no provision concerning how women's access rights are to be defined. How does this affect women in the role in food production. In Pala's words:
the new land reform system, enables individual men to alienate land without any legal obligation to consult with other males or female of the patrilineage. At the same time there is no clear stipulation as to how a woman's customary use rights are to be realized in the event that a male on whose land she depends makes a decision to sell the piece of land (Pala, 1974).
With this background in view, the study set out to find the following; whether women farmers own any land; how much of family land they utilize for food farming; or access rights. We were also interested to know how many parcels of land the farmer has and whether the parcels are consolidated or dispersed.
Out of 100 women interviewed, 92 responded that they owned land. The average women's farm sizes range between 0-1 ha.
A number of women were found to have access to at least two parcels of land. Most of these parcels were dispersed in different places. This indicated the scarcity and demand for land in the area. The ILO reports that:
Most women must be content with land wherever they find it, and the norm is to have access to small scattered pieces of land. The implication for time expenditure just to get to these pieces of land are obvious (ILO 1984 p.61).
Other interest focused on whether the land the woman was farming was already registered and if so in whose name. It was also important to know the women's rights to land they farm, how they acquired the land they are farming, whether they can sell the land and in fact whether they are aware of the advantages one would have with registered land.
The land for food farming mainly belonged to the clan under which the woman was married although some women had access to land which had been bought, rented or given as gifts. Most of the land women farm are registered in the names of their spouses. The women are aware of this handicap and their response were: they have no rights of ownership, they have no right to sell or lease, and they cannot secure loans.
Questions were also designed and directed to elders in the community in order to find out whether there are any land owners in the area, how they acquired the land they own, the types of land they owned and whether the women managed the land they owned by themselves and the general effect of land consolidation in the area.
The elders generally agreed that there were women land owners in the area who owned land which fell to them when they were widowed. However, some elders said that women who owned land in the area only did so in trust for their sons before they grew up to take the responsibility. Most women who own land in the areas have bought the land either by themselves or by their children. Out of 50 elders interviewed 27 (27%) said that
the women who owned managed the land by themselves. Others agreed that land though owned by women, were managed by their husbands or sons. According to elders interviewed, land consolidation, and registration are significant in the area as it enables them to take loans and therefore farm better by buying farm inputs and tools for farming. It is important to note that the women interviewed seemed to be unaware of the mechanics of the new land reform and its effects and that the man becomes the absolute owner of the land. This is why women, asked whether they own land, still look at it from the traditional tenure point of view of the user right, and easily respond that they own land. The women indeed have not been involved in the consolidation and adjudication of land which is geared towards land registration. The implication it will have on them has not yet registered in their minds.
What effect will this have on food production? First, apart from one's own labour, land is the only major resource. Without land, the women cannot determine the returns of their labour. Secondly, land can act as security in getting loans or credit facilities for the improvement of the farm. How are the women going to improve their already observably backward farming situation, when they have no land to secure loans and credit? Third, for the women to be productive, they have to have an upper hand in decision making and managerial power concerning the lands they farm. In Mumbuni, since men have their farms where they grow cash crops, they usually allocate to the women the poorest plots for food farming while they keep the best for themselves. Fourth, because the women do not own land as such in the area, very few are therefore members of cooperative societies. As we will see later it is within this cooperatives that most farmers within Mumbuni get loans or credit for the improvements of the farms.
Finally, the new land reform has reduced the women to a state of dependency on those who control the land (the men) and this is very unfortunate particularly taking into consideration that they provide the bulk of agricultural labour in the country.
Access to credit is crucial for increasing women's productivity in food. Women need credit for tools and equipment and agricultural input. However from this study we realized that credit facilities have reached a significant proportion of women farmers in Mumbuni. In general, it was found that women have few possibilities of getting access to capital, more so because financial institutions can only give loans to those who display security such as land (INSTRAW 1984:113). Women are already disadvantaged in this position as already shown that they have no land.
The main concern of the study was to find out where women go incase they needed credit, sources of outstanding loans if any, purpose for taking the credit if taken, security offered to get the credit and how the credit was being paid back.
Out of 100 respondents, 78 said they have never asked for loans or credit, neither were they aware of such facilities. Most women accepted that they needed credit which they would use to buy land, ploughs and improve on their farms. A number of women needed credit for the purposes counted: to buy food, pay debts, buy furniture, buy domestic utensils, buy land, farm machines and farm-inputs, to buy `posho' mills and pay school fees. The sources of credit facilities were counted as mainly: cooperatives, women's groups and family groups.
The result and family data show that women in Mumbuni in general have no credit facilities. The credit giving bodies are ill adapted to the enterprises in which women are engaged. The women have therefore tried to overcome this financial handicap by organizing themselves in small women's groups of 15-20 members, where they give each other money in turn to meet their individual needs. Usually in such a group, each member of the group contributes about K.Shs.50/- and all give to one member, until every member of the group has had a chance. When the husband takes a loan, most women look at it as a family loan to benefit the whole family. However, the striking point is that the loans taken by the men is mostly used for buying farm tools which are mainly used by the men themselves to ease their work on their cash crop farms rather than for the use by the women on food farms. Most women would like to take loans to acquire the bare necessities of life i.e. to buy food, utensils, clothes; an indication of poverty reflecting that most of women respondents cannot adequately rely on their food farms as this does not bring enough income to survive on. There is no incentive of taking loans to improve the farm.
The cooperative societies are powerful vehicles particularly in an agricultural setting. The societies do not only strive to distribute money accruing to their members equitably but they are also an important instrument in achieving mass participation in national development (ILO 1984:21).
The cooperatives play a very important role in Mumbuni, particularly as they are locally based in the areas and are administered by the local people. They also seem to be the major source of credit that women in the area are more aware of than other credit giving institutions.
The study set out to find out which cooperatives women belonged to, what the members gain by joining such cooperatives who runs them,the women proportion and how many women had actually received credit from the cooperatives.
Out of 100 respondents, 83 were not members of any cooperative. Very few women were represented as most of the cooperatives were found to be run by men. None of them had an elected woman to the level of committee where major decisions affecting the farmers are made.
The role cooperative societies can play in the life of women and food production cannot be underestimated. It is mainly through these agricultural cooperatives that women can get credit for the improvement of their farms, and the cooperatives can also market the products and even help in the processing of some of these food products. This is the only way women can gain from these cooperatives, otherwise the gain will forever go to the men and their cash crops.
The agricultural services usually provided to farmers are: agricultural Extension Services provided by agricultural officers, in service courses in farmers training centres and credit facilities made available to farmers from Guaranteed Minimum Return and Agricultural Finance Corporation.
The most common service to farmers through the Ministry of Agriculture is the one provided by the Extension Officers who are supposed to visit farmers and give advice about husbandry and also introduce new crops. In addition to this the extension officers are supposed to provide group training in the form of demonstration plots, where they teach in groups of 10 to 50 husbandry practices such as planting in lines and spaces and application of fertilizers.
It was found that visits by agricultural instructors were not usually requested by farmers but were initiated by the instructors themselves. In this study we examined whether agricultural officers visited the farm, what advise was given, how many times they visited within the season and the previous season and whether the farmers felt that they gained from such visits.
The responses show that out of 100 women farmers interviewed, only 39 were visited by the extension officers while 61 were not visited. Advise given by these officers were mainly on land preparation and planting. Within two seasons the farmers visited had only been seen once. The general feeling among most of the women is that they had not really gained from extension officers, much more 50 because they had not been visited.
Since most of the agricultural officers are men, there is a problem in trying to transmit information to the women farmers (most of them managers of their own farms) in the absence of their husbands as this can raise suspicion. Culturally, these officers also find themselves asking to talk to the "head of the family" usually the man rather than the woman. It appeared that the homes which were visited (35 out of 39) had a "male head" present.
The study also examined other sources of agricultural information women are exposed to, given that they did not significantly gain from agricultural extension officers. A number of women responded that they either got agricultural information form Church, women's groups, over the radio, relatives and neighbours.
The second type of service extended to farmers is group demonstration plots. From observation the plots are taken from prominent farmers, mostly retired agricultural officers. The demonstrations are usually announced in government meetings (barazas); meetings that women do not usually attend either because of cultural or time constraint. Nonetheless the information given in these meetings can always reach women through friends, neighbours and relatives.
The study examined the number of women who attended the demonstration plots. The results show that a very small number of women attended these demonstrations.
It further indicates that the women in Mumbuni were uninterested, unaware or unable to attend the demonstration plots. This could have been probably lack of information or labour constraints in the house and farms which made women not attend these demonstrations.
The third service given to farmers in training in Farmers Training Centres (FTC). The fee paid for these courses range from K.Shs.10/- to 100/-. The courses usually last from 2 weeks to 1 month. In Staudt's words:
Farmers Training Courses represent a valuable direct service to the farmers as they are more intensive than other educational services and the instructors are highly qualified (Staudt 1977).
A number of farmers were not aware of the availability of Farmers Training Centre. Only 2 women out of 100 had attended the FTC. A study done in Western Kenya on delivery of services to female clientele has observed that:
Husbands are often worry about wives being gone for extended periods of time and in some cases the Chief or assistant must persuade husbands to allow their wives to attend a training course. For women managing farms alone, one to two week training period presents social problems, in that they must make arrangements on their day-to-day household and farm responsibilities while they are away (Staudt 1977).
However, the fact that the training goes to the men rather than the women illustrates the waste involved, as women trained are likely to remain in the farm and engage in farm-work after training while men migrate in search of wage employment mostly to the urban areas. A comprehensive study conducted by ILO/UNDP mission has recommended that wider opportunities for Kenya women for training in agriculture be provided (UNDP and ILO, 1972).
It is already mentioned under the topic of credit that women were found not to gain from the Agricultural Finance Company as they are required to produce land or an indication of wage employment to be able to get loans. Over 80% of women interviewed were not even aware of such credit facilities for farmers.
Women are fully involved in agricultural work. It is essential that the focus should be on women to be provided with support services, which otherwise poses serious obstacles to the improvement of food production.
