Impact of Climate Change Adaptive Strategies on Food Security in Kaloleni County, Kenya

Indigenous coping strategies could cause potential risks on hydrology, soil degradation, Biodiversity and crop yields, which would influence food safety in Kenya. However there’s little information on assessing these strategies and their impact across the four Agro-ecological Zones in Kaloleni County. The main objective of this study was to assess the climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies used by communities in Kaloleni County with an aim of identifying the most suitable strategy per given zone. The majority of the respondents (75%) had 10 to over 20years experience in farming; this shows that quite a good number of the respondents had good farming experience and hence information on the indigenous coping strategies used over the given years. A larger percentage of the respondents were small holder farmers as it was evident from the majority (59%) who owned between 1-5 Acres of land, followed by 11% of the respondents who owned between 5-20Acres, while only 2% owned 20-80Acres of land.58% of the smallholder farmers use intercropping and fertilizer application as coping strategy to crop production, followed by 21% who had used fallowing and mulching. Impact on vegetation distribution (1980- 2010) of three selected forests (fungo, kambe & Jibana) were analysed using GIS and remote sensing hence coming up with Land cover maps. Monthly rainfall data over the same range in years (1980-2010) from three rainfall stations (Malindi, Mtwapa &Msabaha) were analysed to come up with box plots and compared to vegetation change over the same period. Monthly mean rainfall totals from the three rainfall stations indicated a decline in the mean monthly precipitation from 47mm to 8mm, observed between December and February. The long rains started from March which had a monthly total mean of 43mm, rising to its peak in May with a total of 313mm of precipitation and ending in July. Short rains started from October to December. A total of 225 small holder farmers were randomly selected, distributed proportionally across the four agro- ecological zones and interviewed using a formal questionnaire. According to the study findings, 68% of the respondents were Male, while 32% of the respondents were female. Over 60% of the respondents were aged between 41 to over 61 years, implying that they had enough experience in relation to climate change and thus provided information that was largely reliable. Field exploration was also conducted in August 2011 by visiting the various farms, water points and the three forests. From the field observation, most of the water points had dried up due to draught. Reports from FGD indicated that draught had the most frequent occurrence amongst the known extreme events. Therefore as compared to the study findings, the majority (59%) of the respondents used borehole water while 25%, tap water. Forest biodiversity destruction was also evident in the field. To support this observation, statistical data output indicated that the majority of the respondents (93%) indicated that their main source of energy was wood fuel, while the rest (7%) relied on charcoal, solar and electric energy.