Abstract

In spite of their vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change, smallholder farmers have managed to utilize indigenous farming practices to adapt to the impacts of climate change and variability but only at low scale which needs to be scaled up. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities involved in such scaling up of indigenous farming practices. Specifically, the paper assesses existing indigenous farming practices and their potential in adapting to climate change induced food insecurity. Results indicated that 1.6, 12.9, 55.5, 64.4 and 77.5% of the households interviewed practiced contour bunds, crop rotation, intercropping, zero and minimum tillage and cover crops respectively. These farming practices enabled smallholder farming communities improve crop productivity whereby zero and minimum tillage, intercropping, contour bunds and cover crops produced respectively 0.2-1 metric tons, 1.2-2 metric tons, 2.2-3 metric tons and 3.2 metric tons-4.2 metric tons of maize per acre.

Key words: up-scaling indigenous farming, intercropping, crop rotation