Effects of adoption of ecological farming practices on farm income in rural households: Evidence from Central Kenya

Farmers have adopted ecological farming to overcome the adverse effects of climate change and conventional agriculture. However, the performance of ecological approaches, especially the economic outcomes of ecological practices adopted as a package, has yet to be widely documented in Kenya. This paper aims to fill this gap and generate pertinent information on the implications of adopting different ecological practices bundles on farm income. The study considers five ecological practices: crop diversification, composting, mulching, minimum tillage, and integrated pest management (IPM). This study employed a multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) model to capture the effect of adopting different combinations of ecological practices on farm income. The results reveal that 15.3 % of the surveyed households adopted a bundle combining composting, crop diversification, and IPM. Households that adopted a comprehensive package (comprising all five ecological practices) had the largest positive impact on farm income, increasing it by 9.2 %. This package replaces chemical inputs with locally available resources, restores degraded soils and diversifies production risks to increase food production and farm income. Farming experience, off-farm activities, farm size, perceptions of the effects of conventional agriculture, and drought and floods significantly influenced the adoption of the comprehensive package. This study’s findings imply that policymakers and related stakeholders should provide timely weather-related information, enforce sustainable land use laws, and establish targeted extension services and information campaigns to heighten the adoption of all five ecological practices and enhance household welfare by increasing farm income.