Aiding Laikipia Farmers Make Informed Planting Decisions
Climate change has a devastating impact on livelihoods mainly, affecting food security which is a major concern for Laikipia County and other stakeholders.
Agriculture being a devolved function of the county governments, the Laikipia County Department of Agriculture plays a role in ensuring that farmers are able to practice Climate Smart Agriculture techniques to realize food security and increase income for the low-income farmers.
Laikipia is conducting a participatory scenario planning workshop with an aim of designing, disseminating, and delivering user-friendly climate information services for different actors in Agriculture and other sectors. This is being done in partnership with other parties like ASDSP, NDMA, SNV (listen) Hand in Hand, and the Kenya Meteorological Department.
The participatory scenario planning workshop will inform the County Steering Group(CSG) and all the collaborating agencies in coming up with mitigation measures to help in dealing with the adverse effects caused by climate change. In the last seasons when Laikipia County experienced below minimum rains, the Department distributed relief maize seeds and supplementary animal feeds-hay, pellets, and acaricides to farmers in the county as an emergency response against drought.
The team led by Mr. Edward Njuguna - ASDSP value chain officer, has developed weather advisories citing the effects, impacts, opportunities and actions to be taken as we expect normal and below normal rainfall scenarios in the county.
The ward Agricultural Officers will disseminate the information to the farmers for the June-July-August rain season. This will help the farmers make better decisions guided by the weather projections.
The team will provide weather advisories based on the weather scenarios at the Sub-County level by highlighting the impacts, hazards, mitigation measures, and the actions to be taken by the various partners and sectors.
The workshop has brought together officers from the department drawn from various sectors and sub-counties and other officers from the National Government Ministry of Education, Interior Security, and Co-ordination and Ministry of Health.
