ABSTRACT Agriculture plays a major role in the Kenyan economy through its significant contribution to the GDP, a foreign currency earner, supplier of raw materials to the processing and manufacturing sector as well as contributing to the food security in the country. In addition, the sector supports rural livelihoods through farm entrepreneurship and farm-generated employment thereby alleviating poverty levels in the rural population. Beekeeping is an important form of farming especially in ...
ABSTRACT Information and communication technology (ICT) is increasingly playing an important role in the economies of all nations. Educationists are advocating for the use of ICT in teaching and learning due to its potential to overcome many education problems such as, low learning achievement, and motivation. The performance of agriculture students in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations has not been satisfactory. Computer based-instruction has been shown to positively ...
ABSTRACT Agribusiness in Malawi is still in the early stages of development and is associated with insufficient value addition. Farmers‟ ability to produce outputs in quantities and quality forms that are marketable and commercially viable is limited by a number of factors. Lack of sufficient storage and processing facilities as well as inadequate skills are some of the notable constraints. As a way of enhancing the competitiveness of the rural agribusiness actors and ultimately raising th...
ABSTRACT Malawi’s agricultural sector contributes 30% to the GDP and provides employment to more than 85% of the total rural population. The sector is dominated by smallholder farmers who are challenged with lack of access to reliable markets and poor infrastructure. To address this, the Malawian government has encouraged formation of Farmer-Based Organisations in its national development framework. Although Farmer-Based Organisations have been in existence in the country since 1978, acces...
ABSTRACT The Kenyan Seed potato production sector has failed to meet the high and growing demand for high quality seed. Enhanced participation and investments of more private seed potato multipliers could help increase availability and accessibility of quality seed and bridge the supply gap that meets less than 5% of the demand. However, factors that influence agripreneurs’ participation and level of investment in the multiplication of clean potato seed are not well known. The overall obje...
ABSTRACT The assessment of the K.C.S.E agriculture project work has been plagued by disparities between the school and the external based assessments; with the inception of the 8-4-4 education system in Kenya the problem has become worse. The purpose of this study was to investigate the Determinants of Quality Assessment of Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education Agriculture Projects in selected secondary schools of Kakamega County from 1999 to 2003. The study endeavored to achieve the foll...
ABSTRACT Jojoba is a dioecious desert shrub which produces oil of high quality equivalent to that of sperm whale. It is used mainly in the cosmetic and lubrication industry. Currently, there is low production of jojoba globally mainly due to high male to female ratio in the plantations since they are mainly established from seed. To overcome this problem, five experiments were set up with the aim of characterization, propagation and management of jojoba in semi arid areas of Kenya. The exper...
ABSTRACT Information Communication Technologies (ICT) have been used as one of the intervention strategies in the reduction of loss along the agricultural value chains in the developing countries. ICT has been used in Malian agriculture in general as an intervention strategy to acquire information in agriculture sector, but not necessarily in dairy sector alone. In recent years, there has been an improvement in the dairy sector due to the development of peri-urban dairy farming. This has res...
ABSTRACT Weather and climate variability are the major production risks and uncertainties impacting agricultural systems performance and management. This study investigated the access and factors that influence the utility of agro meteorological information by smallholder irrigation farmers in Lari Wendani and Perkerra irrigation schemes in Kenya. A systematic random sampling procedure was employed to select 255 farmers from a total population of 776 farmers. In Lari Wendani 33 farmers were ...
ABSTRACT Agricultural universities invest substantial resources in postgraduate research and generate knowledge products with the aim of providing practical solutions to known practical constraints impeding productivity in the livestock value chains. However, enhancing utilization of the knowledge products by the target beneficiary actors in the value chain has remained a challenge because of not using effective knowledge sharing strategies. Consequently, the gaps between research outputs an...
ABSTRACT Food production in Kilifi district, like in other parts of Kenya, has been declining over the years, lowering food sufficiency to about 30 percent down from 50 percent. Food production continues to decline despite all the efforts put in by the Government and non-governmental agencies, and this has been exacerbated by changes in climate. The adaptation strategies that are in place have not lead to any meaningful improvement and farmers continue to get reduced crop yields each year. F...
ABSTRACT DespitetheimportanceofagricultureinKenya’seconomy,academicachievement ofsecondaryschoolagriculturestudentshasnotbeensatisfactory.Thestudents’ meanscoresinthesubjectfrom theyear2007to2013werelessthan50percentof theexpectedscorenationally.ThemeanscoresinAgricultureinEldoretEastSub County ranged between 5.11 and 5.62 outofthe possible 12.00.This poor performancehasbeenpartiallyattributedtostudents’learningstyles;theirinterest inthematerialunderstudy,motivationandthelearningenviron...
ABSTRACT Secondary school Agriculture in Kenya should equip the learners with knowledge and practical skills necessary for creation of employment. Agriculture is believed to be the backbone of the Kenyan economy contributing to over 30% of the Gross Domestic Product and employs about 80% of the rural population. Kenya Vision 2030 positions agriculture as a key driver for delivering the 10% annual economic growth. It is estimated that 64% of unemployed persons in Kenya are youth, indicating a ...
ABSTRACT Secondary school agriculture curriculum was introduced in Kenya to equip learners with knowledge on the basic principles of farming. The intention was to bring out school graduates who would embrace self-employment and even create employment for others in their farms. Agriculture sector contributes significantly to economic development of this country through; provision of food, employment, market for industrial goods, raw materials for industries and foreign exchange. To realize the...