









































“In the beginning Ngai, who is the God and the divider of 
the universe, called Gikuyu the father of a tribe. Ngai gave 
Gikuyu a share of his land with rivers, valleys, forests rich 
with fruits and animals of all types.

Now Ngai used to go around inspecting and admiring 
the beautiful earth. One day He took Gikuyu on top of 
Kirinyaga (Mt. Kenya). It was the highest point of the 
mountain. He showed Gikuyu a spot in the center of the 
country where there were many mugumo (wild fig) trees. 
Gikuyu saw that the land was very beautiful. And Ngai 
said to Gikuyu, ‘Go. Build your homestead on that spot 
with mugumo trees,’ and he called the selected place where 
the mugumo trees grew Mukurwe wa Gathanga.” 
—Kikuyu creation myth (Mwangi, 2015).

Mugumo tree (“Mugumo Tree Branches,” 2016).

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20171

Alienation in Agriculture: How the Shamba System Promotes 
the Degradation of Kenyan Montane Forests

by Madison Renner

Introduction and Outline
 Deforestation of montane woodlands in central 
Kenya threatens Kenyan social and agricultural 
systems as well as native ecosystems (Maathai, 2010). 
Indigenous plant loss reduces forest ecosystems’ 
capacities for rainwater conservation, eroding 
valuable topsoil and desiccating rivers essential to 
irrigation. Detriments to agriculture are exacerbated 
by the clear-cutting of forests and establishment of 
exotic tree monocultures for commercial timber 
production. 
  The Kenyan shamba system, an arrangement 
allowing local farmers to grow crops while 
tending to exotic tree saplings on commercial or 
state-owned land, has long been supported as a 
solution to deforestation and an aid to subsistence 
agriculturalists. Yet closer examination reveals how 
the shamba system further endangers indigenous 
forests in Kenya by alienating local interests from 
those of the environment, thereby promoting 
environmental degradation. Although dependence 
upon native plant species for food and medicine 
once aligned the interests of indigenous farmers 

with those of forest ecosystems, imposition of the 
shamba system upset traditional customs of land 
appropriation, alienating Kenyans from the land on 
which they relied. The system opposes the practices 
by which indigenous populations sustain themselves  
and practices that support forest preservation, as it 
incentivizes farmers to clear native vegetation and 
to actively hinder the growth of plantation saplings. 
By incentivizing corrupt and unsustainable land 
management practices, the Kenyan shamba system 
assures the continued degradation of montane forest 
as well as the disruption of normal soil renewal 
and irrigation processes essential to successful 
agriculture.
      In the following section, I introduce the problem 
of Kenyan montane deforestation and the challenges 
it poses to agriculture in rural areas. I then examine 
the importance of woodland preservation to pre-
colonial indigenous populations, detailing the 
roles of trees and agroforestry practices in various 
domains of traditional Kikuyu society. In the third 
section, I explain how British colonial land policy, 
first implemented in the 1900s, alienated indigenous 



Alienation in Agriculture: How the Shamba System Promotes the Degradation of Kenyan Montane Forests

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20172

peoples from ancestral lands, and I contrast the 
environmental exploitation that emerged with 
the sustainable practices of pre-colonial Kikuyu 
tradition. In the fourth section, I examine the 
emergence of the modern Kenyan shamba system 
and detail the various ways in which it promotes 
exploitation of forest resources. Finally, I connect 
colonial land alienation and redistribution to the 
loss of traditional values and practices supporting 
forest preservation to demonstrate how the shamba 
system disrupted Kikuyu populations’ intimate 
relationships with native woodlands, misaligning 
human and environmental interests and promoting 
environmental degradation.

Deforestation and Agriculture in Kenya
 Loss of native vegetation in the mountainous 
region of central Kenya is considered one of the 
country’s most pressing environmental problems, 
and it is especially detrimental to Kenyan agriculture 
(O’Keefe et al., 1984; Maathai, 2010). In functioning 
montane ecosystems, native forests provide steady 
water supplies by storing water during rainy seasons 
and releasing it slowly into rivers during dry 
periods. This intra-seasonal regularity of river flows 
bolsters the resilience of agriculturally dependent 
households against seasonal environmental and 
economic changes (Maathai, 2010). Yet tree removal 
disrupts the water regulation system, increasing 
local susceptibility to wet-season flooding and dry-
season drought. The agricultural consequences of 
tree removal are many: reduced river flows in dry 
seasons contribute to drought, more powerful wet 
season flows erode valuable topsoil (UNU-IHDP & 
UNEP, 2012), and native tree loss induces chemical 
and physical changes that decrease nutrient levels 
and increase acidity in any soil that remains (Allen, 
1985). In addition to costing the Kenyan economy 
approximately 16 million USD annually (UNU-
IHDP & UNEP, 2012), these ecological changes 
impede the agricultural success of subsistence 
households (Maathai, 2010). Hence, forest removal 
presents an economic and social problem as well as 
an environmental one: Just as deforestation disrupts 
the functioning of native ecosystems, it contributes 
to extreme poverty and malnutrition in families that 
rely on healthy forests for the success of small-scale 
agriculture (Maathai, 2010).

Pre-colonial Land Preservation
      A description of pre-colonial land use in central 
Kenya is necessary to demonstrate the contribution 
of colonial systems to modern land-hunger and to 
practices that contribute to deforestation. Many 
pre-colonial populations in Kenya relied heavily 
upon forests for utilitarian, cultural, and spiritual 
purposes. The Kikuyu people, who occupy the 
southern slopes of Mt. Kenya, have long traditions 
of practical knowledge about forest resources, such 
as plants’ medicinal and edible properties (Castro, 
1991; Dewees, 1993). Learning about trees was a 
central focus of the Kikuyu enculturation process for 
both men and women, and Kikuyu oral history tied 
ancestral forest use to sociocultural identity (Castro, 
1991). Furthermore, trees played roles in religious 
ceremony, as the Kikuyu considered forests to be 
inhabited by spirits and other supernatural forces 
(Castro, 1991). 
 Due to the importance of forest resources for 
practical use, cultural identity, and religious ceremony, 
practices conserving native vegetation were integral 
to Kikuyu society (Kilson, 1995). Although the 
Kikuyu are a primarily agrarian people and regularly 
clear terrain for agriculture, they developed land use 
practices to ensure the survival of forest cover on Mt. 
Kenya. When clearing forest for agriculture, farmers 
left designated areas of native vegetation intact. 
Customary Kikuyu tenure rights included restraints 
on cutting trees, as permission had to be obtained 
from local elders before harvesting trees or farming 
on mountain slopes (Castro, 1991). In addition, 
the planting and protection of trees were accepted 
means of establishing rights to unclaimed land as 
well as means of demarcating clan and homestead 
boundaries (Castro 1991). This convention 
incentivized care for native vegetation, which often 
served both utilitarian and demarcation roles. For 
instance, Muhindahinda and mukandu trees were 
commonly planted between huts; the former was 
used to make household implements, while berries 
from the latter were used as famine food (Dewees, 
1993). Landholders even placed curses on trees of 
significance, such as the sacred Mugumo tree, to 
protect them from human encroachment (Castro, 
1991; Dewees, 1993). These tree-promoting practices 
created a considerable forest presence on and around 
Kikuyu farms, providing regular irrigation to Kikuyu 
farmland.



Alienation in Agriculture: How the Shamba System Promotes the Degradation of Kenyan Montane Forests

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20173

 In agrarian Kikuyu society, retaining nutrient-
rich soil was equally imperative as conserving forest 
cover for tree use, and the two goals went hand-in-
hand. Agricultural success relied upon a pre-colonial 
land inheritance system that ensured fragmentation 
of lineage land holdings: By cultivating crops on 
regularly reapportioned plots over diverse ecological 
zones, Kikuyu farmers minimized the risks of micro-
climatic variations, pests, and diseases (Dewees, 
1993). Kikuyu households also practiced a series 
of farming techniques, such as bush fallowing and 
crop rotation, to protect soil from degradation, and 
farmers integrated diverse tree species into plots 
of cultivated land to assure soil renewal despite 
frequent crop planting (Castro, 1991). Removal 
of integrated trees was rare, as Kikuyu beliefs held 
that any destroyer of boundary and agro-forestry 
vegetation would die almost immediately (Dewees, 
1993). 
 The cultural meanings attached to trees and 
the fragmentation of land holdings through land 
inheritance had the concomitant effects of protecting 
local forests and promoting nutrient-rich soil, 
benefitting sylvan organisms and agrarian producers 
alike. Though these practices promoted ecosystem 
health in Kikuyu territory, their conservatory impacts 
on trees and soils were natural outcomes of effective 
land use rather than deliberate efforts to preserve 
resources for the sake of the environment (Castro, 
1991). Pre-colonial Kikuyu ecology exemplifies an 
approach to agriculture that sustains the quality of 
cropland by preserving the integrity of surrounding 
woodlands. In such a system, tree conservation and 
clan prosperity are inextricably linked, so human 
and environmental interests align. 

Colonial Land Redistribution
 The human-forest alliance of early Kikuyu 
custom was challenged by the implementation of 
new land policy under British colonial rule in the 
late 19th century. The enactment of the Crown 
Land Ordinance in 1915 brought all land in Kenya 
under the authority of the British Crown, stripping 
Africans’ legal rights to land ownership (Kilson, 
1995). What emerged was a deep sense of insecurity 
among the Kikuyu, whose agricultural, religious, and 
social systems heavily depended on land possession 
and forest use (Kilson, 1995). Yet colonial impacts 

extended beyond passive disenfranchisement: 
Firsthand accounts relate the brutality with which 
Europeans razed Kikuyu huts, storage barns, and 
cattle pens, sending inhabitants scrambling to escape 
their own estates (Kilson, 1995). The displacement 
of Kikuyu and other indigenous peoples from their 
homesteads to inferior farmland—some 60,000 in 
central Kenya by 1932—led to a sense of alienation 
from nature among local populations (Kilson, 1995). 
In a 1932 memorandum submitted to the Kenya 
Land Commission, an indigenous farmer laments 
the hardships undergone by the Kikuyu:

We have suffered because our old lands have 
been taken from us [….] We are fined if we 
cut firewood or timber for building within the 
forest. We must now buy grazing, firewood, etc. 
in places that once were ours (quoted in Kilson, 
1995, p. 120).

European land acquisition triggered the geographical 
and cultural separation of Kikuyu peoples from 
the ecosystems on which they depended, the same 
ecosystems that had benefited from the protective 
measures of Kikuyu systems of land use. The Kikuyu 
and other indigenous populations of Mt. Kenya 
were shunted to land of inferior quality, much of 
which was agriculturally unviable (Kilson, 1995). 
Because displaced peoples had neither ancestral nor 
functional connections to their new and unfamiliar 
environments, religious and cultural customs that 
once had promoted sustainable cultivation and forest 
preservation began to lose meaning.
 In the 1930s and 1940s, British authorities 
began allowing establishment of commercial tree 
plantations on formerly Kikuyu land to provide 
timber for building and firewood. As the tree species 
upon which the Kikuyu had depended were slow-
growing and economically less profitable than the 
exotic eucalyptus and pine, much of the indigenous 
forest was cleared to make way for exotic plantations 
(Maathai, 2010). With the clearing of native 
vegetation came the consequences of deforestation: 
seasonal flooding and erosion, intermittent water 
shortages, and soil nutrient depletion. 
  The subsequent introduction of exotic 
monocultures, rather than reversing the effects 
of native vegetation loss, did little to mitigate the 
environmental deterioration to which deforestation 
contributed. In a naturally occurring forest, 99 



Alienation in Agriculture: How the Shamba System Promotes the Degradation of Kenyan Montane Forests

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20174

percent of biodiversity is comprised of non-tree 
components (Kirubi et al., 2000). Whereas the 
diversity of species in native forests had assured a 
balanced soil nutrient profile, high demand for select 
nutrients by newly planted monocultures altered soil 
nutrient ratios, thwarting the growth of other forest 
species and destroying local biodiversity (Smith, 
1994; Maathai, 2010). Monocultures’ sparse and 
unvaried vegetation lacked the capacity to receive 
and conserve rainwater; it thus failed to mitigate 
the harm that native-species removal had caused 
to agriculture in surrounding areas (Gerber, 2011; 
Maathai, 2010). Hence, not only did monoculture 
establishment in Kenya allow for the destruction of 
native forestland, but it also undermined the efforts 
of local populations to practice agriculture in forest-
adjacent areas (Kirubi et al., 2000; Maathai, 2010).

The Shamba System and Forest Abuse
      To support monoculture seedlings until harvest, 
the Kenyan government and commercial timber 
companies recruited landless Africans, many of 
whom were alienated Kikuyu households struggling 
to survive without access to arable land (Witcomb 
& Dorward, 2009). Once native vegetation had 
been cleared from the areas designated for exotic 
plantation, timber companies allowed farmers to 
cultivate crops alongside exotic timber seedlings 
until the tree canopy closed and lack of sunlight 
precluded further crop growth. The plots of 
monoculture land cultivated by native populations 
become known as shambas, which typically could be 
farmed for up to three years at a time. Tree canopy 
closure on any shamba heralded farmer relocation to 
another shamba plot, where trees recently had been 
felled, to repeat the cultivation process (Witcomb 
& Dorward, 2009). In theory, if enough land was 
available on timber plantations, Kenyan farmers 
could consistently grow subsistence and cash 
crops—maize, potato, beans, wheat, pyrethrum, and 
kale—to support their families without property of 
their own (Oduol, 1986).
      This farming of “borrowed” land, a practice that 
became known as the shamba system after the names 
of the individual shamba plots, became popular with 
Kenya’s growing population and spread quickly. By 
the mid-1980s, 160,000 hectares of forest plantation 
had been established, and 16 percent of national 

maize production took place on shamba land 
(Oduol, 1986). In the years following its institution, 
the shamba system was outlawed and reinstated 
several times due to corrupt behavior by state Forest 
Department officials, who charged farmers for plot 
use and pocketed the profits (Witcomb & Dorward, 
2009). Today, the shamba system remains in effect 
in a form much like the original. Shamba system 
proponents maintain that the system reconciles the 
interests of commercial foresters and local farmers. 
Many praise it for providing employment and 
sustenance to rural Kenyans who, without land, have 
few other sources of income, and farmers’ care for 
seedlings is thought to benefit timber companies by 
promoting tree survival (Oduol, 1986). 
      Although it may benefit participants in the short 
term, the shamba system has proven detrimental over 
the long term by promoting continued deforestation 
and incentivizing practices that undermine the 
efficiency of the system itself. Kironchi (1996) argues 
that high population density and food insecurity in 
plantation areas, coupled with the limited number 
of shambas available at any given time, make the 
system untenable in its original form and destined 
for corruption. Indeed, because farmers do not pay 
to use shamba land, there invariably emerges what 
Hardin (1968) terms a tragedy of commons: Many 
Kenyan shamba farmers exploit plantation access, 
consuming forest resources without considering 
the damaging effects of this consumption to natural 
ecosystems and to other farmers. As a result, a range of 
illegal activities—poaching, illegal logging, charcoal 
burning, and marijuana cultivation—take place on 
plantation land, harming local ecosystems as well as 
exotic plantation trees (Witcomb & Dorward, 2009). 
      The situation is exacerbated by rapid increases 
in the Kenyan population: When the number of 
willing farmers exceeds the number of available 
plantation plots, farmers are incentivized to clear 
native vegetation illegally in hopes of expanding 
plantation area and obtaining more shambas for 
potential cultivation (Oduol, 1986). Often, this is 
accomplished by indiscriminate burning of local 
forests. In 1981, Wanyeki found that 40 percent of 
reported forest fires in Kenya result from efforts 
to obtain more shambas, and subsequent Forest 
Department investigations revealed that much 
of this burning took place in water catchment 



Alienation in Agriculture: How the Shamba System Promotes the Degradation of Kenyan Montane Forests

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20175

areas critical to sustaining river flow (Kagombe & 
Gitonga, 2005). Illegal clearing of native vegetation 
exacerbates the impacts of deforestation, intensifying 
soil nutrient depletion and disrupting normal 
rainfall patterns. These consequences harm the very 
agricultural practices upon which shamba farmers 
depend, increasing the amount of work required to 
successfully plant and harvest crops (Dewees, 1993; 
Maathai, 2010).
 Even after having acquired land for cultivation—
through legal or illegal means—shamba farmers 
have little reason to support timber production by 
supporting the healthy growth of plantation saplings. 
Farmers receive shamba plots for cultivation with 
no guarantee of receiving future plots when tree 
canopies close. Because sapling growth expedites 
the process by which farmers lose their shambas, 
the more efficiently farmers cultivate their saplings, 
the sooner they relinquish opportunities for crop 
cultivation and reliable means of agricultural 
subsistence. Coupled with the fact that farmers 
receive no portion of timber sales—and thus have no 
reason to encourage healthy growth of monoculture 
trees—this creates little incentive for sapling care 
and strong incentive for sapling destruction. Studies 
in Mt. Kenya Forest suggest that nearly 30 percent 
of farmers are directly involved in deliberate efforts 
to hinder exotic sapling growth, delaying canopy 
closure and prolonging their own access to plantation 
plots (Witcomb & Dorward, 2009).

Conclusion
      The willful exploitation and destruction of forest 
resources by rural shamba farmers sharply contrasts 
the sustainable agricultural practices once prevalent 
in indigenous Kenyan societies. The implementation 
of the shamba system, with its various incentives for 
environmental destruction, fundamentally changed 
human-environment relationships in central Kenya. 
Rather than caring for a variety of forest species whose 
comestible, ceremonial, and medicinal properties 
sustained daily life, local Kenyan populations under 
colonial rule began to cultivate exotic species whose 
value, in the form of commercial timber, benefitted 
logging companies alone. This lack of an intimate 
relationship with forest ecosystems, facilitated by 
colonial land alienation and redistribution through 
the shamba system, impedes modern implementation 

of sustainable agro-forestry practice. Though 
monocultures’ contributions to erosion and irregular 
river flows make agriculture increasingly difficult for 
shamba participants, farmers subsisting on meager 
crop yields have little opportunity to plan beyond 
the immediate needs for food in order to support 
sustainable forest development (Maathai, 2010). 
Because the benefits of obtaining more shambas for 
cultivation are more immediate than the long-term 
advantages of healthy forest ecosystems and stable 
irrigation, Kenyan farmers burn the very vegetation 
that their predecessors endeavored to sustain. 
      Furthermore, because modern shamba farmers 
have nothing to gain from successful growth of 
monoculture trees, they have little incentive to protect 
the exotic species under their care. No longer do 
populations rely upon Muhindahinda and mukandu 
trees to demarcate clan boundaries; ownership and 
boundaries have little meaning for the temporary 
inhabitants of borrowed commercial land. Nor do 
native trees have value to farmers for their roles in 
protecting healthy soil, as each farmer will leave the 
degraded shamba plot before nutrient depletion fully 
affects his or her own crop yield. By opposing the 
interests of farmers to those of native forests and 
of healthy natural ecosystems, land alienation and 
shamba system implementation has relegated healthy 
central-Kenyan forests—and productive subsistence 
agriculture—to the pre-colonial past.

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