Building resilience among smallholder farmers

Send a Cow Kenya was joined today by representatives from Stanbic Bank, Mannion Daniels, Kenyan Ministry of Interior and Co-ordination of National Government and the United Nations Environment Programme to discuss the role organisations can play in supporting smallholder farmers to build resilience. The event is sponsored by Stanbic Bank, Kenya.

A culmination of global crises in the last couple of years has sent shockwaves through the most vulnerable communities and created setbacks in many areas where progress had previously been made. The deadly combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly frequent climate shocks is predicted to result in the doubling of food insecurity in Africa and an additional 60 million Africans being pushed into poverty.

Send a Cow Kenya has been working alongside smallholder farming communities in western Kenya for the last 25 years to accelerate lasting change in all these areas. Achievements from the last four years are documented in their recently published Kenya Impact Report.

Debate at the event focused on what resilience looks like for smallholder farmers and the importance of all aspects; social, economic and environmental. Smallholder farming families, who make up approximately 70% of Kenya’s population, are no strangers to unexpected shocks and stresses.