Utilization of rainwater harvesting technologies among smallholder farmers in murang’a county,

Abstract

Water is a critical resource in environmental sustainability, agricultural production as well as for improved livelihoods. Climate variability hinders crop and livestock production in Sub-Saharan African countries. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) is a climate smart agricultural practice to revert this. Rainwater harvesting has been practiced among smallholder farmers for centuries in many parts of the world. Recently, it has gained more attention due to the reported increasing water demand and the need for sustainable water management hence the research was conducted to evaluate the utilization of rainwater harvesting technologies (RWHTs) as a climate smart agricultural practice in Murang’a County, Kenya. Drawing on data from a cross sectional survey of 384 households, our research evaluated the adoption of RWHTs, intensity of crop and livestock enterprises adoption under RWHTs and the determinants for RWH among smallholder farmers in Murang’a County, Kenya. Multistage random sampling and proportionate to size technique was employed to sample farmers in three wards namely: Murarandia, Mugoiri and Wangu. The KOBO kit a phone application was used during data collection. To assess the adoption of RWHTs, descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied. The results found that rooftop water harvesting technology (93a ± 22), infiltration pits (81a ± 21), furrows (68a ± 16), deep ploughing (67a ± 21), terraces (54a ± 14), mulching (51a ± 17), retention ditches (23a ± 18) and water pans (17a ± 5) water harvesting technologies had statitistical significant differences among smallholder farmers (P<0.05), while negarims, water bunds and dams water harvesting technologies were not statistically significant (P<0.05) adopted at a mean ± S.D of 11 ± 4, 6 ± 2 and, 1 ± 1 smallholder farmers, respectively. The findings exhibited that households that practiced livestock production including: dairy cattle farming, goat rearing, sheep farming, beef cattle rearing, pig production, and poultry farming, watered their livestock using rooftop harvested rainwater at a rate of 12%, 10%, 9%, 6%, 3% and 5%, respectively while, 1% practiced aquaculture. Multivariate probit model (MVP) analysis showed that crop enterprises adopted (macadamia, maize, coffee, tea, avocado, fodder, arrowroots, beans, bananas, mangoes and sweet potatoes) among household heads were key crop enterprises that influenced adoption of these RWHTs. The MVP model also pointed out that household head’s access to credit facilities, landownership, age, level of income, education level, gender, family size, source of income, membership to farmers’ groups and access to training services were statistical significant (P<0.05) thus, influenced RWH adoption. Membership to farmers group had merits including: support in farmers’ training, social ties, source of information and source of credit which were also key determinants to RWH adoption. The study recommends relevant stakeholders and policy makers to consider promotion or up scaling of RWHTs for crop and livestock enterprises among household heads in consideration of the determinants influencing adoption rate in Murang’a County.