Community approach to farming yields fruit - Coastweek Kenya
Photo: N. Palmer
CGIAR Climate's insight:
People from the region are known to suffer every rainy season and at the same time face the severity of dry season.
This takes place year in year out as farmers traditionally engage in mixed farming that they inherited from their forefathers, yet it is to blame for causing poverty and soil degradation. “Farms in this region are not diverse as farmers lack innovative ideas and stuck to the traditional farming systems that earns them little income,” Dr. John Recha, Participatory Action Research Specialist with Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), told Xinhua during a field visit to Nyanza on Sunday. Dr. Recha observed that a study done by CCAFS revealed that 37 percent of farmers in the basin have not used any new crop variety in the last 10 years, yet they religiously plant and harvest crops that rarely last them four months.