Advancing climate smart agriculture: adoption potential of multiple on-farm dairy production strategies among farmers in Murang’a County, Kenya
Livestock Research for Rural Development
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Abstract: Improving uptake and intensification of farm-level utilisation of climate smart agriculture (CSA) strategies among farmers is essential to develop resilient livestock production systems for sustainable livelihoods and food security while addressing climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, empirical basis for sector-specific understanding of the adoption behaviour of the farmers to climate change is merely established, prompting the current study on adoption of CSA strategies among resource-constrained dairy farmers particularly in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). The case study employed a joint analysis framework of both multivariate probit (MVP) and ordered probit models to analyse farmers’ joint adoption decisions for four on-farm strategies namely: improved fodder, feed Conservancy, artificial insemination and manure management. The case study, involving 132 dairy farmers from a representative Murang’a County in Kenya revealed that adoption of CSA practices among farmers is widespread in the study area, with majority of the farmers (87%) adopting at least two of the four considered strategies. However, the specific adoption rates were relatively low, ranging from 27% for manure management to 66% for improved fodder and thus the need to target the less adopted strategies and incentivise the farmers to intensify their implementation. The findings show interdependence of the strategies with complementarity and substitutionality relationships among the practices. The interdependence can facilitate the tailoring of suitable packages of strategies which are interrelated to optimise their synergies. Capital, gender, water availability, market access and infrastructure and social networks were found to be the most important determinants of adoption decision as well as the intensity of adoption. These findings from dairy sector-specific data in Kenya are significant to provide tailored and targeted policies in scaling up adoption and intensification of CSA strategies to advance climate smart dairy production systems in SSA.