by David Njagi on 26 August 2021
In Kenya, less than 20% of farmland is suitable for crops due to inadequate rains and degraded soils, and many farmers have seen their land produce less to the point of needing food aid.
Dried-out soils create a hard pan that rains and roots can’t penetrate, but in Kenya, more than 35,000 farmers have joined the Drylands Development Programme to regreen their lands with agroforestry, joining peers in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali and Niger.
By planting annual crops among useful trees like mango, orange and neem, vegetables and animal forage crops receive enough cooling shade and moisture for them to take hold out of the scorching sun.
As each farmer learns what combination of crops and trees works for them, the results are rapidly shared with researchers and fellow farmers through an app, speeding the rate at which all the program participants can benefit from the knowledge.

MAKUENI, Kenya — A quarter of the world’s 4.4 billion hectares (10.9 million acres) of cropland is degraded, often due to drying, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Just over a hectare and a half, or 4 acres, of that dried-out land have for years been located at Benedict Manyi’s farm in southeastern Kenya.

Manyi, 53, watched helplessly as his land lost productivity due to the multiple factors of overuse without restoration, erratic rains, and prolonged droughts. By 2016, the land could not even sustain a blade of grass.

Lately, though, he is changing that. Manyi is among the more than 35,000 farmers in Kenya who have joined the Drylands Development Programme (DryDev), a donor-led project that is turning arid Kenya into green farms.

“I hardly harvested enough before I started practicing dryland agroforestry. Now I get surplus, value and more,” says the father of four, adding that he can harvest up to six 90-kilogram (200-pound) bags of produce from a 0.8-hectare (2-acre) plot, whether the rains are adequate or not.
According to the FAO, the world’s agricultural productivity increased by up to 200% by 2010. But in Kenya, inadequate rains and degraded soils mean less than 20% of the area is suitable for crops, says Dikson Kibata, a technical officer with the country’s Agriculture and Food Authority.

So, farmers like Manyi are learning how to make their degraded lands productive again after joining DryDev, a project led by World Agroforestry (ICRAF) that has been working with farmers in Kenya, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali and Niger since 2013.

Funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and humanitarian group World Vision, DryDev has been training farmers in Africa to transition from subsistence farming and reliance on charity to agriculture that is productive and environmentally friendly.

In Kenya, where about 80% of the terrain is dryland, the project is working with farmers to encourage the growing of annual crops between or under trees, in a technique called agroforestry, which provides enough cooling shade and moisture for the crops to take hold out of the scorching sun. The project has also helped farmers to adopt rainwater harvesting for use on the farm. READ further from the source above