CHALLENGES FACING THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR IN KENYA.

Agriculture is the engine of economic growth in Kenya. with about 75% of Kenyans earning all or part of their income from this sector. Agriculture accounts for 33% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).

However despite been a major contributor to the country’s economic growth, the sector is faced with a number of challenges that have made agricultural productivity stagnant over the years.

Some of the challenges facing the sector include:
CLIMATE CHANGE.
Climate change is no longer a tale we hear of something that is yet to come its here and one of the most hit areas is the agricultural sector, The country’s agriculture is predominantly rain-fed and therefore vulnerable to climate change particularly changes in temperature regimes and precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events. This leads to, among others, unsustainable land and agricultural water management. 

USE OF OUT DATED TECHNOLOGY.
Majority of farmers in Kenya are still using out dated methods to carry out their agricultural activities, some due to inability to access new technology and some lack of information on the new agricultural technologies, which leads to poor productivity, because some of the methods are time consuming and can lead to poor harvest.

Diseases And Pests

There is a huge problem with pests and diseases that not only applies to the pre-harvest moment. There have been some major issues with the storage facilities not being adequate for the goods to stay there for some period of time.

INFRASTRUCTURE
In Kenya one of the major issues affecting agriculture is the lack of and poor conditions of rural roads linking the farmer´s facilities and the commercialization spots in the country.

This affects the loss of perishable goods and also increases largely the costs associated with the production. If production costs are higher, they are translated into the final price of the product that reaches commercialization spots in good shape, impacting the production wheel negatively on both ends

SOIL FERTILITY.
The increase in population of the country has forced the terrain subdivision to be done in smaller land portions . Smaller land portions produce less amount of product and therefore have to be exploited with less downtime between crops.

Soil nutrients are there for not restored naturally damaging the outcome.

As KAAA we have been able to train our farmers over the years on good agricultural practices ,information on new agricultural technologies and educate our farmers on the importance of soil testing so that we are able to solve these challenges in order to have a thriving and productive agricultural sector.