Biota - Biodiversität in Afrika

This subproject within BIOTA East focuses on improving the livelihood of the farming population in the surroundings of Kakamega Forest Reserve in order to reduce the anthropogenic pressure and the risks it entails for sustaining Kakamega Forest in the long run. Increased farm productivity necessitates technological changes that address the site- and system-specific key production constraints and allow a reorganisation of the production system. To be applicable, such options may be land-, labour-, capital- or know-how intensive, depending on the resource endowment of the farm household. Sustaining the resulting production and productivity gains and enhancing systems’ resilience will require a stabilization of the production environment through the targeting of promising options to relevant socio-ecological niches and the on-farm cultivation, conservation and use of biodiversity.

Research activities of INRES in the Kakamega District focus mainly on the following major objectives:

• Identification of maize production constraints and evaluation of technological options for productivity improvement

• Development of a decision support system for technological options based on the socio-ecological niche approach

• Agronomic and sociological evaluation of on-farm fencelines for on-farm cultivation of biodiversity and production diversification