Abstract

Climate aggravated stressors like crop failure, pests and diseases, hunger, high food prices and death of livestock or family members have increased in frequency, intensity and magnitude. These have, aggravate ding rural poverty while and threatening the sustainability of rural livelihoods. Yet Hitherto, many small scale farmers fail to adopt what appear to be relatively simple agronomic or management practices like climate smart agriculture (CSA) which can help them cope. The study focused on the effect of related household shocks to climate change on livelihoods, and factors influencing choice of a coping strategy of smallholder farmers in the Nyando Basin. The population of the study comprised all smallholder farmers that were registered with CCAFS, Kenya. Data was collected in a year-long panel survey of financial diaries (FDs) from 124 households between March 2019 and February 2020. The households were classified into adopters and non-adopters of climate smart agriculture (CSA). Descriptive statistics and multivariate probit regression were used to determine common types of shocks experienced, their trends, and choice of coping strategies. The results showed that most shocks arose from pests and diseases (48.3%) including sickness/death of family member (38.1%) with non-adopters of CSA being affected more than adopters. Market for farm produce was affected by low output prices (81.3%), no market (100%) over the year. Low production of crops was due to pests and diseases (93.9%), high input prices (91.5%) and asset disputes mainly land related (73.3%). Regression analysis indicated that characteristics of the household head, climate smart village location, and county were significant factors influencing choice of a coping strategy. The data indicates that policy recommendation be addressed according to County based selfhelp capacity.