Influence of Environmental Knowledge on Small Scale Women Farmers Adoption of Conservation Agriculture Nakuru County, Kenya

Abstract

Adoption of any technology especially in agricultural practices depends on environmental dynamics. This paper evaluated the influence of environmental knowledge on women small-scale farmers on adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) in Nakuru County. Kenya as one of the developing countries in Africa faced with numerous problems particularly food insecurity, hunger, poverty, diseases and biodiversity loss as a result of conventional agriculture practiced under poor backdrop of environmental knowledge. To alleviate all these problems mentioned above, the alternative method of agricultural practice should now aim at improving conservation agriculture which was discouraged long time ago. But environmental Knowledge to adopt conservation agriculture is needed as better option for maximum agricultural yields and protection of the environment. It is claimed that, CA adoption in Nakuru County by women small-scale farmers was low and there was inadequate research documentation regarding this claim. To establish the claim whether true or not, find out why CA adoption was low in the study area, the research sampled three sites; Naivasha, Rongai and Njoro selected purposefully for differences in ecological characteristics. The sample size of 360 women farmers were randomly selected from a target population of 120,000 women farmers of which, 120 were selected from each of three Sub Counties.  Descriptive survey design using structured questionnaires; interview schedule, personal observation and focus group discussion were used to collect data. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 20) was used in the data processing and analysis. Descriptive statistics; frequency distributions, means, proportions, percentages and inferential statistics; Chi-square, ANOVA, Bonferroni test at alpha value (p < 0.05) level were employed to test the hypothesis. The findings concluded that knowledge of the environment influenced women small scale farmers’ adoption of CA and that CA adoption uptake was low. Recommendations; Policy and decision makers use the results to develop land and agricultural policies, provide incentives to promote small-scale women farmers, use new emerging technologies to speed up knowledge on adoption of CA in order to boost food security and conservation of the environment in Nakuru County and Kenya.