Towards Food Sustainability: Reshaping the Coexistence of Different Food Systems in South America and Africa

This paper presents findings from an anthropological case study on export horticulture viewed as an agro-industrial food system in Laikipia County, Kenya. Anchored on the new institutionalism theory, the study collected ethnographic data over an extended field work of eight months in a horticulture production setting to explore the involved actors, the rules and regulations and access to common pool resources from an emic perspective.

From the study findings, the formal and informal rules and regulations which form the institutional setting in this food system are viewed as changing and defining the operations of the food system's access and management of common pool resources, namely water and land. With the agro-industrial food system competing with local food systems such as agro-pastoralism and smallholder agriculture for these scarce resources in a semi-arid zone, there is potential for conflict and also reduced production and overall benefits to the different food system actors in the study area.