Page 45 - La Agroforestería frente a la Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible

Factors influencing adoption

of on-farm tree planting in

Shinyalu, Kakamega country

On-farm tree planting has been promoted for decades as households. Primary quantitative and qualitative data was
an intervention to ease local community dependence on collected using household questionnaires, key informant
forest resources in Kenya with little success. There have interview guides and focus group discussion guides. Data
also been few studies to understand why this past initiative was analyzed and interpreted using descriptive statistics,
has not been fully embraced. Moreover, there is a dearth frequencies and cross tabulation analysis. 70.8% of the
of information on the main factors that influence adoption farmers reported that land was the biggest challenge to
of on-farm tree planting. Most rural people depend on adoption. With the small land sizes of less than 1 acre
forests for firewood, timber, and other products, hence and large families of over 10 members, they opt to plant
Thalma Khalwale , the need for adoption of on-farm tree planting to ensure food crops and rear livestock for milk production in order
1*
Paul Abuom , sufficient supply and reduce dependence on forests. This to feed their families. Ancestral accession is also a major
2
David Langat 3 has not been achieved due to the scarcity of resources as contributor to the low adoption of the practice since
a result of the high poverty rates in the area. This study land has to be sub-divided many times. In conclusion,
1, 2, 3 Kenya Forestry Research Institute KEFRI
therefore sought to determine the factors that influence 90% of farmers have the desire to plant trees as they
*e-mail: [email protected] adoption of on-farm tree planting premised on the fact fully understand their contribution in their lives. They
that farmers allocate land to on-farm tree planting based however face a lot of constraints. If they can be provided
Keywords: Adoption; factors; household; in- on the household subsistence needs and surplus to with capital to enable them buy more land, trained and
come. earn income for the household. The study population sensitized on tree planting, provided with high quality

Sponsoring institutions: Kenya Forestry Re- of 13,411 households consisted of farming households seedlings and taught the right way to propagate them,
search Institute KEFRI. from Shinyalu Sub-county. Simple random sampling was they would gladly adopt planting trees on their farms.
used to select a sample size of 384 respondents from