A farm typology approach for targeted policy responses: The case of pastoral and agro-pastoral households in West Pokot County, Kenya

Abstract

Most agricultural and food policies often overlook diversity of farm-ing households, resulting in generalized and ineffective interven-tions. Recognizing changing and diverse characteristics of farmtypes is therefore critical. Using data from 502 households in WestPokot County, Kenya, we employ principal component and clusteranalyses to create farm typologies to guide targeted policy inter-ventions. Our results show five distinct groups of farm types basedon their livelihood orientations: “wealthy and livestock-oriented”who thrive on livestock production, “more diversified smallholdings”,which demonstrate a trend toward non-farm livelihood sources,“less diversified mixed farmers” who rely solely on farming, “young,single and literate owned farms” demonstrating emerging leader-ship structure in pastoral communities, and “female-headed or lesswealthy farm households” demonstrating low incomes, which sug-gest vulnerability. We compare these cluster-based market partici-pation levels and food security indicators. We recommend farm-type-specific interventions and targeted strategies suited for speci-fic needs of each farm type.

Keywords

Farmer typology; farm diversity; targeted policies; pastoral and agro-pastoral systems

Published in

Local Development & Society
2025

SLU Authors

• Fernqvist, Fredrik

  • Department of People and Society, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Rajala, Elisabeth

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Economics and Management and Rural development

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/26883597.2025.2544538

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/144510