Abstract:
Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) is an agricultural activity that seeks to improve production sustainably
to enhance food security and agricultural development. The use of climate-smart agricultural interventions is
crucial in ensuring increased agricultural productivity, income, food security, and livelihood for the majority of
small scale farmers in Kenya. To achieve this, various agricultural and economic interventions are often used to
increase agricultural production. However, despite these interventions, maize production in Uasin Gishu County
has declined from 4.4 million bags in 2017 to 3.7 million bags in 2018. Maize farmers have been making negative
gross margins of about Kshs 2,000 per acre per year. The focus of the study was to assess the effects of adoption of
CSA interventions on maize productivity. The study was guided by the diffusion innovation theory. Descriptive
and cross-sectional survey designs were employed in this study. The study drew a sample of 109 small scale maize
farmers’ households from a target population of 10,109 through stratified and simple random sampling
techniques. Primary data were collected using a structured interview schedule and analyzed using descriptive and
multiple linear regression. Multiple linear regression estimates on the effects of the adoption of CSA interventions
revealed that a unit increase in adoption of early maturing maize varieties, increased herbicide use and crop
rotation increased maize production by 431.7%, 644.3% and 611.5% respectively while adoption of early dry
planting and tree planting reduce maize yield by 407.3% and 242.4% respectively. Therefore, in conclusion, the
estimated results of this study rejected the null hypothesis that adoption of CSA interventions have no significant
effect on maize productivity among small scale maize farmers’ households in Moiben Sub-County, Kenya. Based
on our findings, the study recommends that more farmers need to be trained on the use of CSA interventions as
this intervention will help to cut the cost of production and help farmers to realize high-profit margins from their
maize output.
