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Strategic Objective One

Objective 1: We will promote and support appropriate agricultural technologies and seek to improve and up-scale their utilization in an effective and efficient manner.

Core value: Commitment and innovativeness in addressing technology gaps/ challenges and meeting the requirements and needs of farming communities.

Challenges:-

Many farmers and livestock keepers continue to use inappropriate and outdated technologies, which are not environmentally friendly and are unsuitable for use in the current farming systems.  Yet, many technologies are lying in research and development stations due to lack of extension and dissemination pathways, and weak links between the institutions and the smallholder farming communities. In fact, poor extension approaches and methodologies do not take cognizance of farmers needs and requirements, or recognize a need for showing cost benefit analysis of new technologies.

At the same time, there are many good technologies both as hardware and software but not tailor-made to the environments where they are utilised. For example, many farms lose large amounts of soils and soil-water because of the conventional way of ploughing where soils are left exposed.  In other cases, up to 80 percent of farm power relies on human muscles because adequate information on draft power is not easily available. Others lack financing to acquire technologies, particularly equipment.

How we work:-

  • We promote conservation agriculture (CA)  by testing and demonstrating various CA technologies, training communities on principles and practices of CA, and promoting and dissemination through workshops and seminars. In principle, CA is about practicing minimum mechanical soil disturbance which is essential to maintaining minerals within the soil, stopping erosion, and preventing water loss from occurring within the soil; managing the top soil to create a permanent organic soil cover that allows for growth of organisms within the soil structure; and the practice of crop rotation with more than two crop species to control diseases, insects, weeds and pests, which follow specific crops.
  • We engage communities in coming up with suitable options for post-harvest operations such as transport and non-transport solutions e.g. use of mobile telephony, and linking with marketing associations which reduce transport bottlenecks as well as on- and off-farm losses.
  • We work through partners and key stakeholders including government ministries and departments, NGOs, faith based organizations and grassroots community-based organizations. This is important in developing better understanding of situations, developing common approaches and collective action in technology transfer.
  • We develop, test and promote farm equipment such as sub-soilers, rippers, harnesses and carts. These are then demonstrated to farmers for improvements and adoption through farmer field schools, field exchanges and exposure visits.

Achievements in the last 10 years (up to 2010):-

  1. Many farmers in Machakos and Laikipia districts have adopted CA techniques, which has seen productivity within the pilot areas increase by two-fold.
  2. As a result of KENDAT’s work, many farmers are using better farming and transport techniques: good design animal drawn carts with proper harnessing in Mwea and Lari,  panniers in Magadi and Machakos, use of sub-soilers, rippers and associated CA equipment in Laikipia and Machakos and roof catchment water harvesting techniques including pans in Lari, and crop marketing associations in Mwea, Lari, Busia and Machakos.
  3. There are strong and active community groups in several areas: Mwea, Limuru, Lari, Busia, Siaya, Mbeere etc., registered with the government, and working on own projects such as marketing of farm produce, improving welfare of draft animals, fabrication of carts and harnesses, etc.

Priorities for the next 10 years (by 2020):-

  • We will develop a clear M+E framework to assess adoption of CA, and come up with ways of demonstrating and reporting its contribution to rural economy and people’s livelihoods.
  • There are many other needy areas with potential for adoption of CA, which would help steer Kenya’s smallholder communities towards food security. We will therefore endeavour to reach out to more smallholder farmers to accept and utilize CA technologies.
  • We will focus on proper packaging of information and employing proven extension methodologies that will increase adoption of CA and other technologies amongst farmers and livestock keepers.