ABSTRACT The Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) supports one of the poorest and most populous rural populations in the East Africa region. The increase in population and the dipping fish population, has forced the community around the Lake Victoria to seek alternative sources to complement their daily food needs. This has made large scale farming for food crops an imperative option to enable the community meet its daily food demands. Repeated use of the soil around the lake for large scale ...
ABSTRACT Climate change has negative implications on small scale farmers in Zhombe Communal area as evidenced by the failure of agricultural production and poor rural living standards. The farmers within the area have adopted different improvisation strategies as a way of adapting to the climatic changes. The strategies include plant staggering, stream bank cultivation, irrigation farming, organic farming, conservation farming, harnessing IKS, and growing of small grain drought resistant crop...
ABSTRACT The theoretical study of methylammonium bismuth halide, (CH3NH3)3Bi2I9, was simulated using SCAPS 1D software package. The effect of the bismuth perovskite absorber layer thickness on the solar cell performance was investigated using three different materials (organic and inorganic) materials such as Cu2O, CuI, and spiro-OMeTAD as hole transporting layer (HTL), and four different materials (organic and inorganic) materials such as ZnO, TiO2, PCBM, and P3HT as electron transporting l...
Abstract: Black soldier fly farming is gaining traction globally as a strategy for recycling organic waste into high-quality proteins and fat for feed and organic fertilizer for crop production. The support of governments in East Africa to integrate insect meal in livestock feed has opened opportunities for commercializing insect products. Understanding the potential value of Black soldier fly larvae meal (BSFLM) is paramount to inform policies and practices to promote insect farming and ins...
Abstract: Organic agriculture (OA) is often regarded as a sustainable agricultural pathway for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, and an increasing number of initiatives promoting OA were initiated over the last decades. However, holistic empirical evidence on the effects of such initiatives on the sustainability of smallholder farmers is still scanty. We analyzed the effects of five initiatives promoting OA on farm-level sustainability. We selected farmers exposed to the initiatives...
ABSTRACT The issue of water contamination and quality dilapidation in Kenya is more and more becoming a menace to the natural water resources due to modern methods of farming and industrialization which have resulted in water pollution especially in rivers. River Nyamasogota provides water for growing crops and for domestic purposes. The river passes through the areas that have many tea farms where fertilizers are heavily used and hence polluted by inorganic, organic and microbial substances....
Abstract: Agricultural practices of smallholders with low external and internal inputs fluxes cause the risk of depleting soil nutrient stocks, seriously threatening future agricultural production potentials in Ethiopia. To curb soil fertility depletion in these areas, it needs quantification of fluxes that are responsible for nutrient import into and export out of the farming system. The objective of this study was to quantify nutrient fluxes, pools and NPK balances at farm and field scales...
ABSTRACT Low crop yields due to low erratic rainfall, high evapotranspiration, and deteriorating soil fertility in smallholder farmers‘ fields of sub-Saharan Africa have led to a quest for sustainable production practices with greater resource use efficiency. To alleviate water stress, soil fertility decline and reduce runoff, water harvesting technologies and integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) are alternative promising options whose impact on agricultural productivity are not yet ...
ABSTRACT The continuous mining of soil nutrients with inadequate replenishment and improper soil management has resulted in poor fertility levels leading to poor harvests. Even so, researchers have come up with information and new technologies that can reverse the status of poor soils but the concern is that information on the uptake and use of these technologies is inadequate in Embu County. The objectives of this study were therefore to: (i) determine how household demographic and socioecon...
There is growing evidence that low-cost open-source 3-D printers can reduce costs by enabling distributed manufacturing of substitutes for both specialty equipment and conventional mass-manufactured products. The rate of 3-D printable designs under open licenses is growing exponentially and there are already hundreds of designs applicable to small-scale organic farming. It has also been hypothesized that this technology could assist sustainable development in rural communities that rely on sm...
ABSTRACT Kenya and generally Sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing a severe decline in soil fertility which has resulted in low crop productivity, thereby threatening country’s and the region’s efforts to overcome some of the challenges including food insecurity, malnutrition, poverty, and general unemployment. While efforts have been put in place to improve the declining fertility of soils including development and importation of new soil fertility management (SFM) techniques and tech...
ABSTRACT Current demand for soybean in Kenya is higher than production. The deficit which is over 95% is filled through importation from neighboring countries. Despite the high demand, adoption and production is low (0.56 to 1.1 t ha-1) against potential yield of 3.0 – 3.6 t ha-1. The low production is associated with low use of fertilizers. Farmers are using mineral fertilizers below recommended rates and they are not using organic fertilizers despite them being readily available. The obje...
ABSTRACT A field experiment was conducted during 2014/15 growing season at Tumbi, Tabora to study response of sweet potato to organic and inorganic fertilizers. The experiment was split plot laid in a Randomized Complete Block Design with four fertilizer types and different rates; 0, 50, 100, 150 (DAP), 100, 200, 300 kg ha-1 (Minjingu Mazao), 150, 250, 350 kg ha-1 (NPK) and 2.5,5.0,7.5 ton ha-1 (FYM) as main plots and three varieties (Kasinia, Simama and Ukerewe) as subplot in three replicati...
ABSTRACT Soil is a significant reservoir for plant nutrients and hence necessary for plant growth. Soil pH is a very important chemical property of the soil, as it dictates the availability of plant nutrients. Low soil pH reduces soil nutrients. Some of the factors leading to acid soils include continuous cultivation of soil due to scarcity of arable land, excessive use of inorganic fertilizers, climate change and deforestation. Reclamation of acidic soils includes addition of lime which...
ABSTRACT Hydroponics is a cultivation method of growing plants in water. It is a technology suitable for farming that is under artificially controlled environments but can be adapted to situations where land is a constraint. In Namibia this is a potential method for vegetable cultivation. Hydroponics vegetable production has been demonstrated successfully using a balanced conventional nutrient solution, globally, and therefore, an evaluation of its suitability in Namibia using goat manure so...