Barriers and enablers to uptake and implementation of system of rice intensification: a case study of Mwea irrigation scheme in Kenya

It already seems preposterous to be able to sufficiently meet global food demand of the expected nine billion people by 2050 while at the same time maintain our emissions levels below 2ᵒC by the end of the century. This is more so for a continent such as Africa where much of this population is expected to arise from considering the fact that the continent is ranked to have the highest proportion of food insecure population. In order to overcome this challenge, we will need a total revolution of our agricultural production systems to systems that not only focus on increasing food production but also build our resilience to climate change. An example of one such practice is System of Rice Intensification (SRI) which is acclaimed to increase rice production while at the same time reducing the pressure on scarce water resources, minimizing agricultural greenhouse gases emissions and improving the farmers' households' adaptive capacity to climate change impacts by increasing their income. However, despite the success attributed to SRI, its uptake across Sub Saharan Africa is arguably low. This is puzzling considering the high proportion of food insecurity in the region and the region's susceptibility to damage from increased severity and frequency of climate extreme events such as droughts and floods due to its geographical positioning and the limited adaptive capacity of its people. In this work, the researcher sought to understand the barriers and enablers to the adoption of the System of Rice intensification in Mwea irrigation scheme (MIS) in Kenya. The findings show that most barriers to the uptake of SRI in MIS occur during the dissemination of SRI. Further critical barriers to the uptake of SRI in MIS were identified as follows: lack of formal SRI training, high costs of rice production, failure to involve key stakeholder institutions such as SACCOs while marketing SRI and farmer's age. Moreover, the study also depicted that most barriers to SRI adoption were intertwined, thus focusing on a single barrier would be myopic. Furthermore, enablers to the uptake of SRI in MIS are tied to the benefits of SRI pre-empted by lead farmers. This correlation implies that the benefits of SRI are key motivators for SRI adoption. Other enablers include training. However, informal training on SRI through social networks which play a crucial role at disseminating climate adaptation activities amongst small scale farmers, is marked with a lot of inconsistencies which makes it a barrier for SRI uptake. In this regard, we advise that SRI trainers clearly highlight the activities involved in SRI and their resultant benefits during initial SRI information dissemination.