By Kimuri Mwangi
The Kenya National Conservation Agriculture Symposium took place recently in Nairobi. One issue discussed was the slow adoption rate of Conservation Agriculture (CA) by Kenyan farmers.
Kilimo News writer Kimuri Mwangi attended the symposium and asked some experts “What are the challenges slowing down CA adoption in Kenya and the possible solutions?”
Eng. David Njogu, the Chief Engineer in charge of Mechanization in the Ministry of Agriculture.
First of all, I’ll talk of the “inertia”, the unwillingness of organisations and institutions to change. Well, in physics we call it inertia. If you allow me to call it inertia, to change from what people are doing to what they are supposed to do.
Then the other issue is about funding. For us to practise meaningful agriculture, we need tools that are associated with conservation agriculture. It is not possible to continue doing conservation agriculture with the rudimentary tools that people are used to. We need to change and go to the precision machinery that is required to practise agriculture. This requires funding.
The other one is the scale of the work. We know that small-scale farmers can practise conservation agriculture, but the investments that are associated with it may be a bit of a problem for them, and that is why also the government has a contingency plan of bringing the private sector to be the owners of the machinery that can assist the farmers in doing conservation agriculture.
At this end, the government is regrouping farmers into cooperatives, into groups that can be able to receive funds, groups that can be able to plan their work, groups that can also be funded so that they can be able to possess and own, or better still, lease or hire those tools that are required for conservation agriculture.
I would also want to extend this appeal to the county governments. A lot of what is being funded in the counties is mostly infrastructure that can be seen, and whereas infrastructure is good and is quite important, we would also appeal for some exploration to see whether you can be able to fund the soft skills that are required, especially in extension, and also in social interaction, so that farmers can be able to benefit from this.
In other words, I’m saying that extension services funding has been reduced in many counties. Therefore, the reach out to the farmers is already reduced, and this has hindered the passing of the messages to the farmers. Especially messages that would require direct contact between extension officers and farmers have been reduced, and with the reduction of this one, then it means that the message is not going to go through.
If we do this, then we think that when the tools come in and when technology comes in, the youth will also be attracted and will bring new energies to agriculture rather than depend entirely on the past ways we used to do with the elderly people, who are averaging around 64 years now. We need to reduce this one to be able to bring energy to agriculture.
Stephan Lutz, Senior Program Consultant at World Renew Kenya.
There are a lot of factors why CA is not being adopted in Kenya, and some have to do with mechanization, a lack of mechanization. Others have to do with a mindset that not tilling the soil is not the right thing to do.
Also covering the soil, which, by the way, there’s not enough mulch material available often to cover the soil matters. So, we now have a lack of mulch material, and even that mulch material can be animal feed. So some will ask why give it to the soil when we can give it to the animal. So those are just a few constraints we have in adoption.
Conservation agriculture comes with many other factors that will make it successful, and one of them that we believe as World Renew is a participatory approach, where the community identifies the needs, not just the agricultural, but any need they have from the start. And we’re already thinking of phasing out well and the problem with many development partners is they don’t think about the phasing out.
They don’t think about the participation and the ownership of the programmes. So, the community needs to identify that from the very beginning and feel the ownership, feel like they’re a part of their own development. So that is key.
Then we also have other elements that can make CA more lucrative and more interesting for people, especially young people, who have not adopted it and that is irrigation. If we have some irrigation kits and techniques, especially off-season, the people can produce high-value crops like onions, tomatoes, Sukuma wiki, managu and so forth. So that will give them an extra income that will help them.
Also, can we have village savings and loan initiatives so that the community not only relies on the irrigation and the money, but they save the money so that as we say in Kenya, in rainy months, they can be used for medicine, for school fees, for even buying seeds and agricultural inputs for themselves.
Dr. Boaz Waswa, a soil expert at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT is also the Chairman of the Conservation Agriculture Kenya Hub.
The biggest challenge that we have when it comes to conservation agriculture and many other sustainable practices is sometimes the confused messages that are there. We have quite a lot of conflicting messages and all of them nearly mean the same thing and the intention is the same. So, you’ll hear somebody talk about conservation agriculture, another one talk about regenerative agriculture, and another one about climate-smart agriculture. But when you look down into the real message that is behind these practices, it’s the same.
And that’s why I emphasise on the outcome. What can we present to the farmers to understand that if you bundle these practices together, you will see the outcomes that are desired? That comes with a lot of knowledge and educating the farmers on the importance of conservation agriculture and the practises.
The second thing is where mechanisation is involved. Sometimes the initial stages of conservation agriculture are considered labour intensive.
But when you look at it, you can graduate over time. So being able to address labour-related issues through mechanization is one way of making sure that we overcome the challenge of lack of mechanization. We have various equipment for smallholder farmers, middle-level farmers and large-scale farmers. And each farmer can see themselves in that space of CA mechanization.
Another challenge that we can also look at in terms of conservation agriculture is one where we need to connect this to markets. If we don’t connect any technology to markets, it’s very difficult to really scale it. So, we need to connect conservation agriculture to the market opportunities that there are for the various commodities so that the commodity market drives the interest to invest in conservation agriculture.
