Farmer Demand for Soil Fertility Management Practices in Kenya ’ s Grain

The Michigan State University (MSU) International Development Paper series is designed to further the comparative analysis of international development activities in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Near East. The papers report research findings on historical, as well as contemporary, international development problems. The series includes papers on a wide range of topics, such as alternative rural development strategies; nonfarm employment and small scale industry; housing and construction; farming and marketing systems; food and nutrition policy analysis; economics of rice production in West Africa; technological change, employment, and income distribution; computer techniques for farm and marketing surveys; farming systems and food security research. The papers are aimed at teachers, researchers, policy makers, donor agencies, and international development practitioners. Selected papers will be translated into French, Spanish, or other languages. Michigan State University agrees to and does hereby grant to the United States Government a royalty-free, non-exclusive and irrevocable license throughout the world to use, duplicate, disclose, or dispose of this publication in any manner and for any purposes and to permit others to do so. The authors wish to thank Patricia Johannes for her assistance with the editing and formatting of the paper. Land degradation cripples smallholder crop production in Sub-Saharan Africa, including those found in the densely populated, grain basket areas of Kenya. Research in the early nineties already documented and rated nutrient depletion to be very high in the east African Highlands. Whereas some of the soil related problems are inherent, smallholder farmer practices have contributed to the degradation, including the increasing soil nutrient depletion. Yield-increasing mineral fertilizers have long been viewed as the panacea for the low productivity in smallholder farms. However, recent studies question augmenting fertilizer use without adequate attention to soil quality and use of other soil amendments, especially given the evidence that returns to use of inorganic fertilizer are low in degraded soils and because it is often applied inefficiently. The main policy challenge to improvement of productivity is that the adoption of practices needed to restore soil properties and enhance response to inorganic fertilizer remains low. The most obvious impediment is the time lag between farmer investments and observable payoffs, and their public good nature when they involve land resource allocation. Adoption is also limited by the amounts of land and labor required to produce, process and apply some techniques and practices. Extending and adopting location-specific menus of practices is knowledge-intensive, requiring substantial, …