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More than 5,000 farmers in Western Kenya have been trained on soil protection and rehabilitation to improve food security.
The programme, known as Prosoil, targets smallholder farmers from Bungoma, Kakamega and Siaya counties.
It seeks to restore degraded soils and enhance fertility.
The five-year programme, jointly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and European Union (EU) will also support agroecological transition of food systems.
It is being implemented by GIZ.
The Sh317 million (2 million Euros) project also works on linkages with the private sector on soil testing services, tools and inputs provisions.
The project supports farmers on application of lime, vermi-compost, livestock manure and intercropping with nitrogen-fixing legumes.
It has seen farmers practice conservation agriculture after introduction of minimum tillage and maintaining permanent soil cover and crop rotation.
GIZ project manager David Kersting said the project will be implemented on 101,500 hectares (250,811 acres) in three counties.
Sixty per cent of the land is farmed by women and maize and bean yields is increased by 35 per cent.
He was spoke during the agroecology leadership academy conference in Kisumu that hosted 38 participants from Benin, Burkina Faso, India, Kenya, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Tunisia.
“We are strengthening the self-help capacities of small farmers to preserve soil which is the basis of their livelihoods,” Kersting said.
Kersting said they are not only empowering farmers to produce more food but also working with them as researchers in the project.
“We want farmers to tell us what works for them in their farms and what doesn’t for improvement and development of policies,” he said.
The project been running since 2015 and has 200,000 farmers.
Research farmers will help to disseminate learning and knowledge that they will provide to project implementers.
Besides Prosoil, Kersting said it is integrated into a global program soil protection and rehabilitation for food security, which enhances soil and agroecology for resilient agrifood systems in Sub Saharan Africa.
The Sh 342.4 million (2.16 million euro) is aimed at promoting agroecology towards transforming agricultural production.
Kersting said agroecology is one of the key approaches to address the myriad challenges currently facing the agri-food systems.
In Western Kenya, 2,500 farming households have benefited from demand-driven capacity building on agroecology practices including Prosoil and biochar and compost produced by back soldier fly.
“We are promoting agroecology to address effects of climate change, global disruption of fertiliser markets occasioned by Russia-Ukraine wars and Covid-19 pandemic which have affected the agricultural sector,” he said.
