The study found that larger landholders in western Kenya, rather than increase the productivity of staple crops, substitute cash crop production for maize and bean production while land-poor farmers, rather than intensify food production, apply their labor towards agricultural wage work or nonfarm work. Thus larger landholders do not invest their wealth in inorganic soil fertility enhancements, such as mineral fertilizers, while smallholders do not invest their labor in organic soil fertility enhancements, such as green fertilizers or improved fallows. On average, farmers substitute land for fertilizer. Meanwhile, soil fertility enhancement and aggregate agricultural productivity remain low in this region, calling into question the efficacy of resource conservation and agricultural development efforts and pointing to a need for alternate food policies if economic structural transformation--the transformation of an agrarian economy to a diversified economy--is to take place in Kenya.