A total of 7% of Kenya is covered by forests, and earlier this month, the East African country agreed to allow it’s farmers to make use of forests as a deterrent for illegal loggers and to reduce deforestation. This means that farmers in Kenya are now being encouraged to farm in the forest.
Forest farmers, according to the Plantation Establishment and Livelihood Improvement Scheme (PELIS) started by the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), operate as a deterrent to illegal loggers. Farming communities are also less inclined to conspire with loggers targeting protected indigenous trees since they profit from their forest plots. The PELIS programme was introduced as far back as 2005, when Kenya’s Forest Act was introduced, but only started gaining traction around 2016.
“Introduction Plantation Establishment and Livelihood Improvement Scheme (PELIS) is a practice where farmers plant food crops in clear-felled forest area for a period of four years. Trees are planted after one year and farmers leave forest after tree canopy close within three years,” a research study by ResearchGate read.
Farmers obtain a patch of woodland to use for producing crops, keeping bees or dairy animals, and other agricultural operations for 500 shillings a year – a fraction of what it normally costs to lease farmland. Farmers are also assisting in the growth of trees, primarily exotic fast-growing species such as cypress and pine, from seedlings provided by the KFS, which is then sold for timber.
Farmers either leave the PELIS programme after three to five years, when the trees have attained maturity, or move to a new section of forest cleared by the KFS to cultivate and replant.
According to the Global Forest Watch, from 2002 to 2020, Kenya lost 49.4kha of humid primary forest, making up 14% of its total tree cover loss in the same time period. Total area of humid primary forest in Kenya decreased by 7.6% in this time period. During its national budget speech on April 7, Kenyan government announced that Ksh10 billion would be allocated toward forest conservation.
Government added that it believes small-scale farming on forest land is an essential pillar of its plan to have 10% of the country covered by forest by the end of 2022.
There are no public records indicating how much forest land is currently cultivated under PELIS. According to a 2018 legislative report, the KFS has allotted more than 23 600 hectares of forest to the programme by that time.
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