Maize production gains 1M tons as croplands expand by 126%
Originally published by KBC Digital — Read the original article →
Kenya’s land area under crop farming rose by 126% in three decades to reach 7.8 million hectares with the country’s main staple food, maize, realizing biggest gain in production.
Data by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the increase in agricultural land use from 3.46 million hectares was driven my conversions of grasslands mainly to support food and industrial crops.
“The matrix shows that grasslands were largely converted into croplands while forests were largely converted into grasslands and croplands. Similarly, croplands were converted into forestlands and this may illustrate the effect of agroforestry systems where trees are grown in farmlands,” said KNBS in the Development of Land Accounts in Kenya report.