Constraints for adopting climate-smart agricultural practices among smallholder farmers in Southeast Kenya

CONTEXT: Climate uncertainty challenges the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Awareness of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices and access to climate-smart technologies are key factors in determining the utilization of farm and land management practices that may simultaneously decrease greenhouse gas emissions, increase the adaptive capacity of farmers, and improve food security. OBJECTIVE: Understanding how biophysical and socio-economic constraints affect the adoption of CSA practices and technologies plays an essential role in policy and intervention planning. Our objective was to identify these constraints among smallholder farmers in Taita Taveta County of Southeast Kenya across varying agro-ecological zones. METHODS: We conducted a Climate-Smart Agriculture Rapid Appraisal that consisted of four mostly genderdisaggregated smallholder farmer workshops (102 participants), a household survey (65 participants), key informant interviews (16 informants), and four transect walks. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate a dissonance in the perceived awareness of CSA practices and utilization of CSA technologies between state actors and farmers. State actors emphasize lack of awareness as a barrier to adoption, while farmers express knowledgeability regarding environmental change and climate-smart practices but are confined by limitations and restrictions posed by e.g. market mechanisms, land tenure issues,and lack of resources. These restrictions include e.g. uncertainty in product prices, lack of land ownership, scarcity of arable land, and simply lack of capital or willingness to invest. Farmers are further challenged by the emergence of new pests and human-wildlife conflicts. Our research findings are based on the contextual settings of Taita Taveta County, but the results indicate that adopting CSA practices and utilizing technologies, especially in sub-Saharan regions that are heavily based on subsistence agriculture with heterogenous agro-ecological zones, require localized and gender-responsive solutions in policy formation and planning of both agricultural extension services and development interventions that take into account the agency of the farmers. SIGNIFICANCE: This study contributes to existing climate change adaptation research by increasing our un- derstanding of how physical and socio-economic constraints can affect the adoption of new farm and land management practices, and how CSA-based intervention strategies could be restructured by local stakeholders to be more inclusive.