Sixty-five groups in Nyeri county have benefitted from Sh57 million from the Kenya Climate Smart Agricultural Project this financial year.
Nyeri Agriculture executive James Muturi on Wednesday told the Star the groups from six wards are implementing the five-year programme.
The wards are Thegu, Gakawa, Mugunda, Gataragwa, Rugi and Mukurweini Central.
The objective is to enable farmers to improve productivity, profitability, resilience, adaptation and enhance food security, without a negative impact on the environment.
The programme, which is being undertaken in 24 counties across the country, is expected to run until February 2022.
It is funded jointly by the World Bank and the Kenyan government.
“The project’s development objective is to increase agricultural productivity and build resilience to climate change risks in the targeted smallholder farming and pastoral communities in Kenya,” Muturi said.
“It is also meant to provide an immediate and effective response in the event of an eligible crisis or emergency.”
Muturi said the project supports the farming community in three windows, with one being micro-projects where farmer groups, common interest groups, and vulnerable and marginalised groups write proposals for funding.
The proposals would have to be within the five project value chains in Nyeri –dairy, indigenous chicken, potatoes, beans, and bananas farming.
Proposals are vetted by the project team and those that meet the set standards are funded, he said.
The other, he said, are subprojects touching on the lives of a minimum 500 households.
These are development projects as well as environmental conservation projects.
“Last financial year, two dams were desilted and three community water tanks built on this window. This year, we will be setting up three irrigation projects - Mureru dam in Gakawa, Kiria dam in Gataragwa and Thiha Sagana irrigation scheme in Mukurwe-ini,” the CEC said.
“In addition, we will complete phase two of Lusoi dam in Thegu with activities including completion of desilting, building a water distribution tank and lying of irrigation mainlines.”
He said the county will use the funds to structure the dairy value chain, complete with a processing plant, in the next financial year.
The last window involves collaboration with producer organisations where this year it will be supporting the potato cooperative to capacity build farmers, set up warehousing facility as well as a seed multiplication business.
“We are also supporting Kieni Dairy Products limited to set up a feed formulation plant.”
