The Kenya Agricultural Productivity and Sustainable Land Management Project is a Kenyan government project which responds to Kenya’s limited success to land degradation address. Kenya Agricultural Productivity and Sustainable Land Management Programme-KAPSLMP seeks to improve sustainable use of natural resources and raise productivity and incomes of rural farmers. It has two broad objectives one being developmental and the other being global environmental. These are:-

1. To facilitate agricultural producers in the targeted operational areas to adopt environmentally sound land management practices without reducing their incomes

2. To reduce and mitigate land degradation in the targeted areas and to contribute to maintenance of critical ecosystem functions and structures.

The project works with rural communities in three catchment areas of Kenya of Taita Taveta, Kinale- Kikuyu and Cherangany. In order to achieve its targets, this project involves service providers from the private sector and from various government departments to implement its planned activities collectively with clients on the ground.

Among the activities that KAPSLMP- Kenya Agricultural Productivity and Sustainable Land Management Programme,has targeted to disseminate is; conservation agriculture which will assist farmers in the catchment areas produce food in an environmental friendly way whilst taking care of the fragile ecosystems and sustaining production for economic development.

To meet its target that there was need to build capacity of the farmers through the service providers in the objective of adopting conservation agriculture. Training for the service providers was therefore planned and prior to that, a reconnaissance mission to the catchments was carried out by the staff from KAPSLMP and a team from the African Conservation Tillage Network.

The main purpose of the reconnaissance was to assess the training needs, identify key challenges experienced by farmers and other agricultural stakeholders in the region and verify the suitability of the identified training venues and logistical arrangements in place as well as available service providers in the sites whilst establishing logistical prerequisites for their engagement during the training.

Specific objectives of the Mission was to:

a) Assess the training needs and identify key challenges experienced by farmers and other agricultural stakeholders in the region through collective and participatory interactions.

b) Verify the suitability of the identified training venues and logistical arrangements in place.

c) Identify possible farm CA service providers in the sites and establish logistical prerequisites for their engagement during the training.

d) Identify any existing or partial conservation farming system in the region and level of understanding on the issues and practice involving the systems by the practitioners.

This mission therefore helped to set the ground for the trainings that have been conducted by KAPP and ACT in the three counties.