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2. Read Article 1, discuss the situation with the person sitting next to you and then list the challenges faced by farmers in each of your regions. Try to include references from article 1, but justified with real examples from your own area.

Article 1:
Challenges facing small scale farmers in sub-Saharan countries

Challenges facing small scale farmers in sub-Saharan countries like Kenya Seventy percent of Kenya’s population is involved in Agriculture either directly or indirectly. As in many other sub-Saharan countries, a large majority of these are small scale farmers who rely on rain-fed agriculture. This is a severe limiting factor together with other factors such as poor soils, pests, diseases and recurrent drought. According to Temu & Temu (2005) there has been a limited investment in irrigation and there is a lack of affordable technology to improve soil fertility, for pest and disease control, weed management and the introduction of drought tolerant crop varieties. On top of all this, farmers have limited access to capital and infrastructure, including roads, railways, airports and sea ports thus causing high costs of transport.

In Kenya specifically, agriculture currently contributes to over 60% of the country’s GDP through exports of tea, coffee and horticultural products. Traditional crop products have been cereals like maize, wheat, millet and sorghum with tea and coffee as cash crops.Over the recent past in Kenya, there has been a move towards high value agricultural products (HVAP) since they have a higher market value than traditional products. These are products with high monetary value with emerging and expanding markets worldwide and include vegetables, fruits, flowers...