Abstract
Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) strategies have been introduced in Nyando basin (comprising Kisumu and Kericho Counties) in Kenya, and farmers have comparatively taken up the practices. This has resulted in diversification of farming crops/livestock and incomes to bridge seasonal shortfalls under erratic harsh weather conditions due to climate change. The main objective of the study was to determine how smallholder farmers bridge seasonal incomes variations. This study demonstrates income diversification probabilities on four outcomes of climate-smart agriculture; agricultural practices, sales of goods and services, gifts/remittances, and savings (deposits/retrievals). Additionally, gender aspects were aggregated on the same in climate-smart villages (CSVs) and non-CSVs communities. The study used household-level financial diaries panel data, collected in 2019/2020 from 124 samples of farmers selected by a multistage sampling technique. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic model were used to determine risk/probability of income sources and mobility (livelihood diversification) from a set of strategies. Results indicated that agriculture diversification activities (sale of goods and services and agricultural practices) as income sources were seasonal-sensitive and during droughts households diversified to gifts/ remittances and savings. Education, age and household size were noteworthy aspects that influenced the choice of livelihood diversification strategies there were gender differences in sources of contributions to household transactions whereby women mainly relied on Gifts/Loans/Credit/Advances while sales of goods and services were exhibited in men. CSVs predictors on all the income sources over the year were negative and not significant indicating greater probability of CSVs shifting incomes sources to sales of goods than the non- CSVs. Key words: Climate smart agriculture (CSA), financial diaries, gender, diversification, season, income bridging, rural Kenya.
Highlights
Climate change has led to extreme temperatures, frequent droughts and flooding in some areas, adversely agricultural production in Africa
The regression slope for each unit increase on the variable, the log-odds of married households falling into the savings category relative to sales of goods and services decreased by 0.986 units
Results indicate that married households that depended on savings as a source of income were at a lower risk in this category and at greater risk of depending on sale of goods and services than single households
Summary
Climate change has led to extreme temperatures, frequent droughts and flooding in some areas, adversely agricultural production in Africa. Rural farming households must adjust to climate change by adopting coping and adaptive strategies in order to survive (Banka, 2016). In developing countries choice of coping strategies and adaptive capacity is limited and according to Bjornlund et al (2018), households’ livelihood coping mechanisms have become progressively more multifaceted and varied in southern Africa. Responses’ triumph is upheld on household capacity of formulating choices as regards exploitation of financial, labor, land and water resources. These strategies are often unavailable for a majority of rural households. For these farmers, income is highly variable affecting key farm decisions on agricultural production especially those applying traditional methods on less than 2 acres of land becomes uneconomic. Low incomes limit agricultural development among poor families (Korir et al, 2015)
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