Impact of climate change on the agro-ecological innovation of coffee agroforestery systems in central Kenya

Climate change and variability is the most widespread anthropogenic challenge affecting agricultural production and productivity particularly in the tropics. Coffee sector is sensitive to climate change as it requires relatively cold temperature and higher rainfall duration. Adaptation to climate change in the coffee agroforestry is, therefore, important to address the impacts, but there are barriers, and limits. The aim of this Thesis was to analyze the adaptation strategies to climate change in Central Kenya. We studied the steps in adaptation, which includes (1) the knowledge on climate change and adaptation, the motivation towards adaptation, (2) current choices of households’ adaptation strategies, and their determinants, (3) the roles of innovation system and institutional context to support adaptation. This study was based on four sources of information: - (1) Focus Group Discussions to predefine the questionnaires, (2) household surveys, (3) stakeholders interview, and, (4) historical climate data. The data collection considered four farming typologies; - food crops, specialized coffee, diversified coffee-dairy and specialized dairy farming systems in the coffee and food crops zones. Mann-Kendal trend analysis and Sen’s slope estimator were used to compare the farmers’ knowledge of climate change with the historical climate data, while Heckman model was used to analyze adaptation strategies and their determinants. The findings explore consistent results between farmers’ knowledge and historical data analysis for temperature, while inconsistency is observed in rainfall change. Analysis of farmers’ perception revealed rainfall is radically declining over time, while no evidence in rainfall record is found to support the farmers’ perception. The inconsistency is therefore, substantiated with analysis of patterns. Coffee and food crop farmers are found to adapt to climate change differently. Farmers who are aware of the changes are found more willing to explore adaptation strategies although some of the farmers who do not perceive the climate is changing are also adopting strategies for factors other than perception. The comparison between coffee and dairy sectors found that actors in the coffee are limited, the system is highly centralized with limited options for farmers to process and market their products, while the dairy sector is informally controlled by demand based business and comparatively, numerous actors. We conclude in this study that the patterns in rainfall affects the farming activities of the study area higher than the annual changes. Consequently, farmers adopt a series of adaptation strategies in response to their perception of changes in climate and economic pressure in the farm. This adaptation to climate change also depends on the nature of actors’ interaction and institutional context. In relation to policy development, this Thesis contributes to household level adaptation policies, research policies and international agreements and negotiations. The household level policy recommendations consists of three scenarios. Farmers’ intensification in coffee applying the right technological innovations. The second and third policy options are the diversification to dairy and complete sectoral transformation to dairy depending on the profitability and adaptation level of the sectors. The results in this study are derived from surveys and analysis of innovation systems. Other strategies such as new infrastructural development and institutional subsidies could be potential for adaptation. We therefore, recommend, these could be potential future research topics.