The Development of Peasant Commodity Production in Kenya, 1920-40.

The article focuses on the factors which led people in Kenya to produce agricultural commodities from 1920 to 1940. The detailed evidence to provide a case for the growth of African commodity production has been produced elsewhere. There is in fact no doubt that there was a great expansion in cash-crop production in the domestic market in Kenya during years when so many academics have dubbed Kenya's peasantry as subsistence producers. The most useful way of approaching the question of the response of peasants to prices would obviously be to compare their behavior in relation to changes in prices and wages over these twenty years. Unfortunately, there is a lack of data, because there was very little contemporary interest shown by the Europeans in the prices of African produce. For instance, cash wages and commodity prices published annually in the Blue Books are so regular as to throw serious doubt on their validity. The most useful index of African commodity prices would be of those prevailing at local markets, but no such material was ever obtained.