Crop-livestock interactions in smallholder farming systems and their implications for the adoption of Conservation Agriculture in Kenya

Abstract

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.