STEPS centre

Climate change in East Africa

Environmental change and maize innovation pathways in Kenya

Maize as a window

Maize is an important staple crop in Kenya, socially, politically and economically. This project takes maize as a window through which to explore differential responses to climate change, market uncertainties and land use changes over time. It traces different types of innovation and response proposed by various actors – public agricultural research institutions, donors, development agencies, private companies and farmers.

The research explores how interventions and programmes of these various institutions address issues of sustainability - whether through crop improvement, seed or input supply, produce marketing support or other initiatives - in the face of these challenges. At issue is the way in which actors in different institutional and geographic locations understand and frame resilience, for example as a property of seeds, farming systems or broader livelihoods; and how these framing assumptions shape agendas and steer solutions, programme designs and resources in certain directions and not others.

Diverse pathways, multiple systems

The combined effects of climate, market and demographic changes and uncertainties vary between and within different agro-ecological zones of Kenya, in diverse and socially differentiated ways. The research explores pathways followed or envisaged by farmers (wealthy and poor, male and female), individually or as groups, in local crop, soil and water adaptations, for example; and the extent to which these strategies are, or might be integrated into national and international policy, research and development initiatives.

In doing so, the research seeks to highlight the multiple systems of innovation that coexist, overlap and sometimes conflict; how some systems come to ‘count’ more than others; and opportunities for (re)opening these processes for wider debate.

Explainer: why is maize so important?

Drought resistance for staple crops is the holy grail of plant breeding in the developing world, particularly in Africa, where limited irrigation constrains agricultural growth. This challenge becomes even more acute with the prospect of greater variability in rainfall patterns as a result of environmental change.
Environmental dynamics determining soil moisture thus have major impacts on agricultural incomes and food security in dryland farming areas, and are a key factor in influencing livelihoods and pathways into and out of poverty.