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Browsing Agriculture Books, Book Reviews and Book Chapters by Subject "Farmers"
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Item Assessment of farmers’ perceptions of soil quality indicators within smallholder farms in the central highlands of Kenya(Springer, 2007) Mairura, F.S.; Mugendi, Daniel N.; Mwanje, J.I.; Ramisch, J.J.; Mbugua, P.K.A study was conducted to determine farmers’ perceptions of soil quality and soil management practices that influenced soil fertility within farmers’ fields in Chuka and Gachoka divisions in central Kenya highlands. Soils were characterized by farmers after which they were geo-referenced and sampled at surface depth (0–20 cm) for subsequent physical and chemical analyses, to determine differences within farmers’ soil quality categories. Special attention was given to agricultural weed species. Indicators for distinguishing productive and non-productive fields included crop yield, crop performance, soil colour and soil texture. A total of 18 weed species were used to distinguish between high and low soil categories. Significant differences among soil fertility categories implied that there were qualitative difference in the soils that were chacterised as different by farmers. Fertile soils had significantly higher pH, total organic carbon and exchangeable cations, with available-N being significantly different in Gachoka. Factor analysis on 15 soil properties identified 4 factors that explained 65% of the total variance in soil quality. Soil fertility and crop management practices that were investigated indicated that farmers understood and consequently utilized spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability in soil quality status within their farms as a resource to maintain or enhance agricultural productivityItem Improving food production using ‘best bet’ soil fertility technologies in the Central highlands of Kenya(Springer, 2007) Mugendi, Daniel N.; Mucheru-Muna, Monicah; Mugwe, Jayne; Kung’u, James; Bationo, A.Declining crop productivity is a major challenge facing smallholder farmers in central highlands of Kenya. This decline is caused by continuous cultivation of soils without adequate addition of external inputs in form of manures and fertilizers. With this background, an on-station trial was initiated at Embu in 1992 to evaluate the feasibility of using two leguminous shrubs; Calliandra calothyrsus and Leucaena leucocephala for improving food production. In 2000, an off-station farmers’ participatory trial aimed at offering farmers soil enhancing technologies for replenishing soil fertility was established in Meru South District. The results from the Embu on-station trial indicate that, over the 11 years of study, calliandra and leucaena biomass transfer with half recommended rate of inorganic fertilizer treatments gave the best average maize grain yields of 3.3 Mg ha-1. Treatment where calliandra was alley cropped with maize but the prunings removed recorded the lowest maize yield of 1.2 Mg ha-1. Treatments with calliandra and leucana biomass transfer had similar yields but treatments that were alley cropped with leucaena did better than those that were alley cropped with calliandra. On the other hand, results from the off-station trial in Meru South indicate that, on average, across the seven seasons, sole tithonia gave the highest maize grain yield followed closely by tithonia with half recommended rate of inorganic fertilizer with 6.4 and 6.3 Mg ha-1 respectively. Control gave the lowest yield of 2.2 Mg ha-1 across the seasons. On average, integration of organic an inorganic sources of nutrients gave higher yields compared to all the other treatments.