Comparison of Water Use Savings and Crop Yields for Clay Pot and Furrow Irrigation Methods in Lake Bogoria, Kenya

As population grows mainly in developing countries resulting in an increase in water scarcity particularly in arid areas, irrigated agriculture is required to produce more food while using less water, and to do so without degrading the environment. The extent of improvement of water management in arid lands involves very high costs and irrigation methods that can help meet this challenge by giving growers greater control over the application of water is desirable. Clay pot is an efficient and cheap irrigation method that does not require water of high quality. Despite the significant efforts at Kapkuikui informal irrigation scheme to increase food production using furrow irrigation method, production has been declining over time due to water scarcity and fields abandoned as a result of salinity raising the need for improvement of the water productivity using an environmentally sound irrigation method. The objective of the present study was to evaluate water use savings under clay pot compared to furrow irrigation methods using field trials of maize and tomato crops and also soil water balance techniques. In addition, analysis of the salinity of irrigation water and soil at the scheme was done. Results indicate that the irrigation water sourced from springs at the scheme is saline with a salinity of 0.85g/l. The clay pot system was found to be more efficient than the furrow irrigation method by saving 97.1% of applied water for the maize crop and 97.8% for the tomato crop respectively. In terms of yield increases, the clay system was more productive per unit of water than the furrow irrigation method. The maize grain yields was 32.2% higher than that under the furrow, while fresh fruit tomato yields was 43.7% higher in the clay pot system than the furrow. Keywords: maize, tomato, water productivity, semi-arid.  

Resilience and collapse: histories, ecologies, conflicts and identities in the Baringo-Bogoria basin, Kenya INTRODUCTION

The concept of resilience is now applied across the natural and social sciences to provide a means of examining and understanding adaptation and transformation over a longer time period, in response to environmental, economic, cultural, or political shocks or adverse events. This essay introduces a collection of 10 studies that analyse resilience in the context of the Baringo-Bogoria basin, a predominantly savannah ecological zone in Kenya's northern Rift Valley. Framed by the adaptive cycle model, the studies span a history of 200 years, but also detail current challenges to the social-ecological system of the region. Resilience has allowed the communities of Baringo-Bogoria to adapt and transform in order to maintain production systems dominated by cattle pastoralism, with intensive agriculture in niche locations. The authors suggest that the most recent challenges confronting the peoples of this region - intensified conflicts, mounting poverty driven by demographic pressures, and dramatic ecological changes brought by invasive species - have contributed to a collapse in essential elements of the specialised cattle production system, requiring a re-orientation of the social-ecological system