Smallholder farmers' knowledge on the use of bioslurry as a soil fertility amendment input for potato production in Kenya

Abstract

A survey was conducted on farmers' fields at Werugha and Wusi-Kishamba wards in Taita Taveta County, Kenya, to assess the factors influencing farmers' decisions on the use of bioslurry in the management of soil fertility. Knowledge gaps on bioslurry use provide contrasting claims about the value of bioslurry from source, storage and handling, crop types, soil, and climate conditions, and as a fertilizer. The majority of the farmers in the study sites double up as dairy farmers which has resulted in enormous production of under-utilized cow dung. Over-dependence on the use of inorganic fertilizers leads to the destruction of soil physical and biological properties; hence, the provision of essential nutrients required by plants for growth and development is not achieved at the maximum recommended rates. This results in a yield decrease with potato yield ranging from 8 to 15 t ha À1 , which is 2-to 3-times below the achievable yield of 40 t ha À1 . A survey questionnaire was developed and administered to 120 small-scale farmers within the two wards. Results showed that the use of bioslurry has not been well adopted by farmers from the two wards as only 18% responded to using bioslurry on their farms whereas 78% relied on chemical fertilizers and other forms of manures such as farmyard manure. However, even those using slurry had since been reported to have challenges with its use and application.The 36% of farmers who applied bioslurry alone did so due to its availability considering the high cost of inorganic fertilizers while those who combined it with inorganic fertilizers had faith in chemical fertilizers and that they aimed at achieving high crop yields. The major challenges farmers faced while using slurry on their farms were reported to be on lack of knowledge on the exact quantity to be applied per unit area and on the storage of excess slurry from biodigesters. This implied that even though slurry was available, it was still not useful to the farmers due to under/over application and poor storage. The study, therefore, recommends capacity-building programs and agricultural extension services to be developed, to ensure adequate knowledge on bioslurry use and adoption by smallholder farmers in the management of soil fertility in enhancing crop productivity.

Increasing rainwater use efficiency, gross return, and grain protein of rain-fed maize under nitrate and urea nitrogen forms

“…Crop water requirement and supply ought to be balanced against water scarcity and efficiency of nutrient use to establish an equilibrium on the right time and amount of water supplied to the crop for the realization of optimum water productivity also known as "Crop per drop" (Rockström, 2003;Chai et al, 2016;Nasar et al, 2021Nasar et al, , 2022bNyawade et al, 2020;Alhammad et al, 2023a). On the other hand, nutrient uptake efficiency is viewed as the proportion of nutrients used in producing the economic yields (White et al, 2018;Mugo et al, 2021;Mwakidoshi et al, 2021;Mirriam et al, 2022;Muindi et al, 2023). Therefore, RUE is often considered as the ratio of primary net productivity of the aboveground yield to the annual rainfall is equally so informative to water use efficiency (WUE) (Gitari et al, 2017).…”

Role of Phosphorus and Inoculation with Bradyrhizobium in Enhancing Soybean Production

“…For instance, AASR [16] stated a low legume yield of less than 1 t•ha −1 and Mutegi and Zingore [17] reported a stagnated average legume yield of about 0.7 t•ha −1 contrary to the expected 3 t•ha −1 , which exacerbates food insecurity in SSA. Te major cause of such low productivity is low soil fertility caused by insufciencies in mostly N and P [18][19][20][21][22]. Low soil fertility is equally attributed to negative nutrient balances for these minerals resulting from low use of inorganic fertilizers, leaching, and continuous nutrient mining through crop harvests [23][24][25][26].…”