Supporting Farmer Innovation to Enhance Resilience in the Face of Climate Change in Farming Systems in Machakos and Kitui Counties, Kenya

Over the years, farmers have been innovating to address various challenges such as declining crop and livestock production, poor soil health, water loss, pests and diseases, among other challenges that some farmers perceive as being partly related to climate change. The resultant innovations have great potential for improving food security, natural resource management (NRM) and livelihoods. However, formal research usually pays very little or no attention to these local innovations despite their potential to improve the livelihoods of farm families and to benefit the wider community, if these local initiatives are well supported. In responding to irregular rainfall patterns and degradation of natural resources, farmers in Machakos and Kitui semi-arid Counties of Kenya have come up with various innovations related to crops, livestock and NRM. These include finger millet nurseries, wall terraces for water harvesting, combining rock-hyrax manure with farmyard manure, and determining the sex of chicks before they hatch.This chapter presents a new approach to agricultural research and development (ARD) that is complementary to conventional ARD approaches and is implemented through the project Combining Local Innovative Capacity with Scientific Research (CLIC–SR) funded by Rockefeller Foundation in Eastern Africa. The focus here is on the work in Kenya. CLIC–SR promotes a farmer co-managed mechanism known as Local Innovation Support Fund (LISF) to catalyse locally defined experimentation and innovation. This support has led to increased awareness of the important role of farmer innovation in dealing with climate change and other challenges to improving food security and NRM.