President William Ruto proposed a shift toward land consolidation, warning that rapid population growth and the continuous subdivision of family farms pose a serious threat to national food security and rural agricultural productivity.
Speaking during a church service at St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Matunda, Kakamega County, on Sunday, October 11, the president urged families to embrace organized settlement models instead of carving up agricultural land into smaller plots whenever children need land to build homes.
Protecting Farming Land From Over-Subdivision
President Ruto argued that excessive land fragmentation leaves households with plots too small for meaningful farming, severely restricting their ability to grow staple food, cultivate cash crops like coffee, or grow vegetables for household income.
“Instead of you, as a parent, cutting down three acres to plant or build a house, we can continue to plant those three acres so that the children can come and live here,” Ruto stated.
He urged communities to adopt housing arrangements that accommodate expanding generations while preserving prime agricultural fields intact.
“So that we don’t fall because the fields that we use to grow food, we have cut down, and people are living. We want to continuously begin the process of land consolidation so that we can avoid land fragmentation and we can live in settlements so that we can get land to grow food, to grow crops, to grow crops so that we can have money,” he added.
Alignment with the Affordable Housing Plan
President Ruto stated that Kenya must find sustainable solutions to accommodate its expanding population without compromising the land essential for national food production.
This strategic shift towards land consolidation aligns with the administration’s broader Affordable Housing Program. By utilizing public land and transfers from state agencies to build organized, high-density residential developments, the government seeks to absorb urban and rural housing pressure.
The administration maintains that developing public land for structured housing serves a dual purpose: safeguarding public property against unlawful land acquisition while easing pressure on citizens to subdivide productive agricultural land into residential plots.
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