Enough funding is available to support climate compliant farming but there are not enough individuals or groups willing to do it, experts now say.
The experts drawn from state and non-state sectors say that most private sector and development partners are eager to fund realistic initiatives that implement climate adaptation to ensure sustainable food production in the face of climate change.
The experts include Peter Odhengo, in charge of development partners liaison at the Treasury, Paul Gamba, head of the department of agricultural economics and agribusiness at Egerton University, Maritu Kamara, country’s head of International Fund for Agricultural Development, and Cara Mukavi, the FAO country representative.
They were part of a high-level panel during the launch of FAO country programming framework for Kenya being implemented in 2022 to 2026.
Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mithika Linturi presided over the event at a city hotel on Wednesday.
They said the national and county governments should empower local families to come up with smart agricultural practices that can receive adequate funding from non-state actors.
Many of the policies proposed by senior officials do not cascade adequately to the grassroots, they said.
Odhengo said Treasury had received substantial funds for which 44 counties are qualify to be channeled to farming groups.
“We have to tailor the local farmers to think about climate smart agriculture in terms of adaptation. Currently, much effort is needed to revolutionise our thinking when it comes to farming,” Odhengo said.
"We have received funding from IMF, World Bank and others to fund viable climate smart farming that promotes adaptation and we must ensure that these lofty sounding policies cascade to grassroots," he said.
There is enough money from development partners for projects that get cascaded to the village level so that the concept of smart agriculture is adopted and adequately implemented, he added.
Gamba said there is a huge gap between research output from universities and other research institutions and implementation.
He gave the example of his involvement in a Government of Kenya-IGAD funded project in 2012 dubbed Ending Drought Emergencies (EDE) which produced strategies for ending severe droughts in the country but which have not been adequately implemented.
“I’m a shamed of having been involved in the ending drought project and produced various policy proposals but this has not been implemented. Just this year, we have seen a historic drought,” he said.
Gamba said that county government should devolve the food production and nutrition policies to the village level.
