What are the impacts of rural-urban migration to agricultural development in Kenya?

      

What are the impacts of rural-urban migration to agricultural development in Kenya?

  

Answers


Selinah
Labour shortage
As people migrate from rural to urban centres, less people are left in the rural areas and therefore this means less people are left to supply the labour needed. Also those people who are energetic and vibrant are the ones leaving rural areas for town life and this means the old age who are left back in the rural areas are less productive in terms of offering the needed manual labour for agriculture production. Migration therefore reduces the population in rural areas hence causing shortage of labour in the rural agriculture sector.

Decline of rural economy
When people migrate from rural to urban areas, it makes the rural economy to decline in the sense that the rural area which relies on agriculture as their backbone of their economy is negatively affected. This is because for those who farm, there will be no people to sell to because most of them have migrated to the town (lack of local market leads to poor rural economy). Also the agriculture produce also decline because of shortage of labour and also because most people have moved to the urban areas and therefore, most land remain unutilized because their owners are not there to maximize its use. This situation may therefore lead to persistent poverty cycle and food insecurity within the society.

Vicious cycle of degradation
Migration of people from rural to urban areas can lead to vicious circle of degradation as it generates smaller markets for the local activities. As people move the agriculture economy declines as it loses able people to perform the agricultural activities and also this migration also affects the marketing of the farm produce.

Availability of remittance to the rural people
As much as the migration has its negative impact as above, it also brings some advantages with it. It is assumed that the populations which move to urban centres, do sent remittance to the people back in the rural areas whereby they use the money to till land and also hire people for manual labor in their farms. This is believed to compensate the gap of labor that has been created by people migrating to urban areas.
Smwenje answered the question on November 17, 2018 at 15:35


Next: Okech and Wanjala are in a partnership business that sells hardware. They share profits and losses equally after allowing for an annual salary of Sh.600,000 to...
Previous: What are some of the roles of a disaster management officer at pre-disaster phase?

View More Sociology Questions and Answers | Return to Questions Index


Exams With Marking Schemes

Related Questions