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Strategies for Sustainable Crop Production in Semi-Arid Africa

This is a record of the experience of a research team attempting to identify a development path for a farming system in semi-arid Africa. The farming system is the largely-subsistence production of crops and livestock by smallholders in the Machakos and Kitui Districts in Eastern Kenya. The region is known locally as Ukambani- “the place where the Kamba people live”. This region has a long history in which the food demands of rapidly growing populations have periodically outstripped the productive capacity of the land and current technology. Today, the population pressure on land and its rate of growth are among the highest in the world, and emigration is no longer a feasible solution. But numerous other areas of Africa are not far behind in population pressures and a more sustainable agriculture in this region is important not only for Kenya. Almost certainly, the problems of agriculture in Machakos-Kitui today represent a future scenario for much of semi-arid Africa. This article is also concerned with methodology for conducting research on farming systems. While the project was designed according to the concepts of Farming Systems Research (FSR) (Collinson, 1982), the realities of development assistance projects created challenges in implementation. The research also departed from the conventional FSR plan as new possibilities were realized, and with great benefit. The outcome is a well-founded hypothesis: contrary to much contemporary wisdom, a strategy of augmenting traditional soil enrichment practices with modest amounts of fertilizer is economically feasible for many farmers and provides the best prospects for food security and sustainable agriculture in this climatic zone.