Falling by the wayside?

Agroforestry technologies are very knowledge intensive, and some farmers in the study area simply don't have the skills to adopt them, even if they want to.

Agroforestry technologies can significantly improve crop yields. So why are they not more widely practised if their virtues are so obvious? Recent research in Western Kenya provides some clues.

Between 1997 and 2004 the World Agroforestry Centre, the Kenyan Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) introduced two agroforestry practices to improve soil fertility in 17 villages in Siaya and Vihiga districts. They did so using a low-cost extension method known as the 'village committee approach,' which involves farmers in both the development of the technologies and their dissemination.

The more important of the two technologies, known as improved fallow, requires farmers to plant fast-growing, nitrogen-fixing shrubs on plots of land that are left fallow for one cropping season. The other involves a practice known as biomass transfer. Leaves from shrubs such as Tithonia diversifoli, often grown off-farm, are cut by farmers and incorporated into the soil as green manure when planting crops. Both practices can significantly increase soil fertility and crop yields.

After a period of intensive dissemination, 91% of farmers in the study villages in Vihiga district and 53% of farmers in Siaya district had either stopped using the technologies after experimenting with them, or never adopted them. Furthermore, many of those who did use the technologies were found to be 'pseudo-adopters'; they adopted the practices not because they improved soil fertility, but because they provided other benefits, such as access to credit or the chance to sell tree seeds back to the project.

Evelyne Kiptot, a scientist at KEFRI and consultant to the World Agroforestry Centre, subsequently examined the uptake of the technologies in villages beyond the 17 pilot sites. "The results were very disappointing," she says. "Even among those farmers who'd heard about the technologies, uptake was very low." Just a third of the 103 farmers interviewed had heard of biomass transfer, and although many experimented with it, the majority later rejected it. A higher number, 43%, had heard about improved fallow technologies, yet only 13% used them.

In Vihiga district, average farm size is a meagre 0.5 ha, and the average family consists of 7 to 8 people. Many families are too poor to consider foregoing one season of crops, which they are obliged to do if they adopt improved fallow technologies. Indeed, farming families who have adopted agroforestry technologies have tended to be those who are better off and have larger landholdings. Kiptot also believes that a lack of knowledge may have hampered adoption. "Agroforestry technologies are very knowledge intensive, and some farmers in the study area simply don't have the skills to adopt them, even if they want to," she says.

According to Kiptot, extension agencies need to rethink their strategy for reaching farmers in areas like Western Kenya. "Agroforesters should recognize that technologies may not suit every farmer and farm condition." In the meantime, researchers need to come up with a low-cost approach that provides technical backup to the spontaneous diffusion of agroforestry innovations.

Kiptot, E. 2007. Seeing Beyond fertiliser trees: A Case Study of a Community Based Participatory Approach to Agroforestry Research and Development in Western Kenya. PhD Thesis, Wageningen University and Research Centre, The Netherlands.