Person:
Kassie, M.

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Kassie
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M.
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Kassie, M.
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0000-0002-5898-3877

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    What's in it for farmers? Farm level advantages of Conservation Agriculture (CA) in Kenya
    (CIMMYT, 2016) Micheni, A.N.; Kassie, M.; Marenya, P.P.; Nyarindo, W.
    Conservation agriculture (CA) consists of three principles: reduced tillage, retaining crop residue on the soil surface year round, and crop diversification (either intercropping or rotational systems). This practice is important to sustainably increase crop productivity through improving soil organic matter, conserving moisture, weed control, pests and diseases management, and enhancing farmers’ resilience to drought and climate change and variability. A four year (2010–2014) experiment was established on farmers’ field sites in eastern region (Embu, Meru and Tharaka-Nithi counties) and western region (Siaya and Bungoma counties) of Kenya. The experiments included conventional tillage (CVT) or farmers’ average practices, and two CA-based practices involving no or zero tillage (ZT) and a system of tillage involving construction of furrows and ridges (FR) rather than full tillage (although furrows and ridges were not established in the western Kenya sites). Beans in eastern and Desmodium in western regions were incorporated as intercrop in maize cropping systems. The experiments were carried out both in the short rain (SR) and long rain (LR) seasons. The financial analysis of the various treatments was carried out based on average village grain and crop residue prices and daily labour wage rates. For inputs (fertilizer and herbicides) the prevailing market prices were used.
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    Going to scale: How do Conservation Agriculture practices spread among farmers in Kenya?
    (CIMMYT, 2016) Odendo, M.; Micheni, A.N.; Kassie, M.; Marenya, P.P.; Ayaga, G.; Nkonge, C.; Muricho, G.; Obare, G.
    Demonstration sites will continue to be centers of experimentation and learning for farmers. The results presented in this brief, demonstrates the efficacy of the demonstration approach to agriculture extension. It is emerging that group cohesion and multi-stakeholder methodology approaches have the potential to be effective and efficient. Field days were found to be effective in awareness creation of conservation agriculture (CA) technologies.
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    Crop-livestock interactions in smallholder farming systems and their implications for the adoption of Conservation Agriculture in Kenya
    (KALRO, 2015) Jaleta, M.; Odendo, M.; Ouma, J.O.; Kassie, M.; Kanampiu, F.
    This study was conducted as part of the project titled: ‘Enhancing Total Farm Productivity in Smallholder Conservation Agriculture-Based Systems in Eastern Africa’. Its purpose is to inform agronomists and other project partners on the existing crop and livestock production setups in the project intervention sites and to help determine to what extent the interaction between crop and livestock subsystems could potentially facilitate or hinder the adoption of conservation agricultural practices. A number of institutions and individuals contributed in various ways in the production of this baseline information and deserve acknowledgement. The authors would thus like to acknowledge EU-IFAD for funding the project, the Kenyan Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KARLO)-Embu and Kakamega Centers for facilitating the overall implementation of the study, which involved household and community surveys on which this report is based. The authors also acknowledge the contributions of respondent farmers in providing the necessary data gathered during the survey process, Ministry of Agriculture staff for logistic support and the enumerators for their commitment in data collection.
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    Economic and Environmental Benefits of Sustainable Intensification Practices (SIPs)
    (CIMMYT, 2015) Jaleta, M.; Kassie, M.; Marenya, P.P.; Muricho, G.
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    Food security as a gender issue: why are female-headed households worse off compared to similar male-headed counterparts?
    (CIMMYT, 2014) Kassie, M.
    The centrality of gender equity for inclusive development is a concept that is not contestable. The manifestations of inequality predicated on gender are myriad. These range from unequal access to educational opportunities, gender-based discrimination and social norms that constrain the participation of women and other groups that are unfairly marginalized from the development process. In this brief, we focus on the results from research projects that examined how the differential food security situation is predicated on gender. We examine why given similar opportunities and demographic profiles, female-headed households (FHHs) tend to perform worse than their counterparts, male-headed households (MHHs). In particular, we find that two households that are similar in every respect (except that one is headed by a woman and the other by a man) have different food security outcomes. What explains this? What does this mean for gender-sensitive inclusive and equitable agriculture? This brief discusses these issues based on recently published research from Kenya.
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