Nakuru: A climate action initiative focusing on supporting smallholder farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve soil health while enhancing crop yields and farmer incomes has been launched in Nakuru. The initiative, known as the ‘Cropland Carbon Farming project,’ aims to equip farmers across the eleven sub-counties with skills to embrace new agricultural techniques to avoid losses due to climate change and address food security issues.
According to Kenya News Agency, the initiative is a joint venture by the County Government of Nakuru, Cereal Growers Association- Farm to Market Alliance (CGA- FtMA), and Boomitra. Leonard Bor, the County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for Agriculture, Fisheries, and Livestock, indicated that the project empowers farmers to participate in the carbon market by sequestering carbon in their soils through techniques such as crop rotation, cover cropping, and reduced tillage. These techniques are expected to enhance soil moisture and increase soil organic matter, leading to higher crop yields.
Mr. Bor stated that the sustainable practices employed in the project contribute to improved crop yields and overall farm productivity. Improved agricultural practices offer a powerful opportunity to reverse land degradation and decarbonize soils, effectively creating carbon removals and promoting overall soil health. The initiative focuses on helping farmers improve soil health, increase productivity, and generate income through high-integrity carbon credits, with the ultimate goal of maximizing environmental, social, and economic benefits to farmers.
The project is guided by the Climate Change (Carbon Markets) Regulations, 2024, and incorporates advanced soil sampling technology that is cost-effective and less invasive. The CECM emphasized that the project represents a promising approach to addressing climate change while simultaneously improving the livelihoods of farmers and promoting sustainable agricultural practices.
Agricultural experts note that Kenya, like the rest of Africa, is losing farmland productivity at a high rate. Mr. Bor highlighted that around 75 percent of the Kenyan population is dependent on agriculture, with croplands home to many small and marginal farmers. With a rapidly growing population expected to reach 96 million by 2050, Kenya urgently needs to sustainably produce sufficient, nutritious food while addressing climate change impacts from agricultural practices.
Mr. Bor emphasized that agriculture emits 20 percent of greenhouse gases, making adopting long-term, climate-sensitive farming imperative. Governor Susan Kihika’s administration has entered into various public-private partnerships aimed at increasing the uptake of climate-smart innovations and technologies by smallholder farmers to help reduce production costs and boost incomes. The CECM reiterated the devolved unit’s commitment to encouraging sustainable farming practices in its policies and budget to ensure food and nutrition security and build resilience against climate change shocks.
The CECM explained that the practices involve incorporating agriculture-smart technologies like minimum tillage to improve soil fertility and enhance food security and productivity. Agriculture is vulnerable to climate change, particularly in Kenya, where farmers face irregular, insufficient, and unpredictable rainfall patterns. Climate change threatens food security and contributes to biodiversity loss, insecurity, and nutrition challenges.
Mr. Bor noted that climate change is worsening daily due to extreme weather events such as drought and flooding, creating significant loss and damage. Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) is seen as a solution to erratic weather patterns, as it involves actions that sustainably increase productivity, enhance adaptation, reduce greenhouse emissions to zero, and enhance national food security and development goals. The County administration uses various forums, including farmers’ field days, to disseminate information to farmers to address climate change challenges.
The investment in climate-smart innovations and technologies promotes food security, resilience in the economy, job creation, and poverty reduction. Mr. Bor added that the growing urban populations in Africa drive up food demand, which could be met if smallholder farmers embrace climate-smart agriculture practices to cushion them against climate change challenges like drought, floods, pests, and diseases.
The national government’s 2022-2026 Climate Smart Agriculture Multi Stakeholder Platform strategic plan (CSA-MSP) aims to equip farmers with adaptation practices on climate action to increase food production and reduce food prices. The Ministry of Agriculture lists climate smart agriculture practices that include developing drought and heat-tolerant crop varieties, using waste products from crops, training on crop insurance costs and benefits, supporting agricultural machinery to reduce post-harvest losses, adopting biological pesticides for green gram farmers, conservation agriculture practices like zero tillage and mulching, adopting a warehouse receipting system, and making use of waste material for biogas.
For pastoralists, practices involve shifting herd composition from cattle to goats and camels, while dairy farming involves providing feed supplementation to increase productivity, ensuring adequate water supply, improving collection systems to reduce spoilage, and installing biogas systems to provide household energy and reduce emissions from manure.