Strengthening Farmer Adaptive Capacity through Farms of the Future Approach in Wester Kenya

hrough the farms of the future (FotF) approach, the CCAFS climate analogue tool can be used to connect farmers to their possible future climates through farmer-to-farmer learning exchanges. In East Africa, this has already been piloted in Lushoto, Tanzania (Nelson et al. 2012), and recently implemented in Nyando, Kenya. The Farms of the Future approach focusses on two main objectives: First, to build on farmer-to-farmer exchanges to analogue sites as a valuable option to improve adaptive capacity and support knowledge transfer, second, to improve understanding of local practices and available tools for enabling change, as well as cultural, economic, or institutional obstacles to such adaptive change.

The FotF approach involves four key steps: First, using CCAFS climate-analogue tool to identify climate analogue sites, including the potential social, economic, environmental similarities and learning opportunities, second, facilitating learning between farmers and other agricultural innovation system (AIS) stakeholders, third, documenting the learning experience by farmers and other AIS stakeholders using photos and video cameras and lastly sharing of the lessons learnt by farmers and the other AIS stakeholders. The aim of this study was to strengthen the adaptive capacity of farmers and other Agriculture Innovation System (AIS) stakeholders from Nyando, Kenya through farmer exchange visits to their analogue sites in Kenya. This paper shares the learning experiences of Nyando farmers’ across the different ana- logues sites they visited in Kenya.