The Low Emission and Climate Resilient development
(LECRD) Project in partnership with the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) is supporting the State
Department of Agriculture (SDA) in implementing the Kenya Agriculture Insurance
and Risk Management, KAIRM Programme in Rongai, Nakuru County. This relates to project 6 outcome
of minimizing the impacts of extreme climate events for improved and resilient
livelihoods by providing Area Yield Index Insurance (AYII) to small scale
farmers in conjunction with Insurance companies.
The project team conducted a site survey to monitor the season progress of maize crop and complete the farmer registration process in Rongai Sub County before the start of crop cutting exercise to be done by the Kenya National Bureau of statistics (KNBS) to projected yield estimation. This estimation is crucial in determining pay outs to be made to insured farmers.
The farmer registration exercise was conducted through an
online portal http://e-subsidy.mezzanineware.com. This entailed training enumerators and Rongai sub
County Assistant Chiefs on the data to be captured. The chiefs were identified
as important resource persons because of their closeness to the community and
their mobility given they possess motorcycles to ease traveling in the sub
county.
This resulted in an increased farmer registration of up
to 65%. The team documented the seasonal
maize progress and digitized the farmer register through the recruitment gender
balanced data entry officers. This enhanced team work and engagement with of
all the relevant stakeholders.
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LECRD, SDA and Rongai Sub county teams meeting farmers to assess the season’s progress at Kipseynan Primary School, Solai Ward
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The Nakuru county government has committed itself to
continuously support the expansion of the programme to one more sub county
within Nakuru County based on the positive feedback received from the farmers.
There will be continuous monitoring of the registered farmers to evaluate the
uptake of insurance from farmers in different wards.
The uptake of the crop insurance by farmers relies on
access to timely climate information. This information is relevant and
complements weather based index agricultural insurance as a key strategy for
climate change adaptation and improved community resilience to the vagaries of
climate change.
The LECRD project is collaborating with KMD to avail this
information to farmers by installing 20 Automatic Weather Stations (AWSs). An AWS is an automated weather station enabling
measurements be made from remote areas. . This is a major shift from the
traditional and manual observations of weather elements. The AWS employs the
use of electronic sensors connected to a data logger which facilitates
automatic data processing. Another advantage of AWSs is the acquisition of a
continuous set of sub daily data values providing information on highly
variable climatological parameters. These systems have been established
globally and their timely nature in delivering climate information is
beneficial to many farmers vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change. These Automatic Weather Stations will be
spread across five counties namely; Bungoma, Homabay, Nakuru, Narok and Embu. A
AWS site installation survey was carried out to determine suitability of the
sites and recommendations made on appropriate sites for the installation. The
recommendations would also serve as reference for KMD future AWS installation.
The LECRD Project has supported the procurement of twenty (20) Automatic
Weather Stations, AWSs set to be installed in five (5) Counties namely;
Bungoma, Nakuru, Homabay, Embu and Narok.
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