The impact of agroforestry-based soil fertility replenishment practices on the poor in western Kenya

The case study explores the relationship between agroforestry-based soil fertility replenishment(SFR) systems(improved fallows and biomasstranfer) and poverty reductionin rural western Kenya.It further examines the role that different disseminationapproaches play in conditioning which segments of society ain access to information technologies and then uses them . The study made use of many qualitative and quantitative data collection methods and sample from both pilot areas where researchers maintained a significance presence and nonpilot areas where farmers learned of the technology through other channels.Adoption process were analyzed quantitativelyusing almost 2000households while changes in impact indicators were measured for just over100 households.qualitative methods included case studies for for 40 households, where researchers lived in the village for six months,and focus group discussions involving 16 different groups.The findings showed that poverty is rampant among households and appered to be wosensed during the study period. the poor were reached by many different information providers and liked certain aspects of almost all types of organizations,from government extension to community group-based methods. Access to information is mediated by social relationships of wealth,gender and status;never the less, poor farmers acquired a significant amount of knowledge about soil fertility management. Adoption rates are not outstanding but they are encouraging upto 20% of all farmers using the technologies on a regular basis, and a sizable percentage of farmers newly testing.Unlike some agricultural technologies historicall,SFR was found not to be biased toward people controlling and managing resources above a certain treshold . The study also found that the poor were using the agro forestry technologies to to much greater extent than they were fertilizer(about33%of farmers not using soil fertility practice were trying the new systems).The technologies were almost always atleast doubling yield maize. Despite these promising signs,the systems were not found to be linked to improved household-level food security or poverty indicators,primarily because the size of the fields under the agroforestry systems was,on average,quite small.

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