Overview
The Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project (hereafter named KACP) represents one of the first pilot projects in the context of promotion and implementation of Sustainable Agricultural Land Management (SALM) practices and generation of GHG removals through soil and tree carbon sequestration. Supported by the BioCarbon Fund of the World Bank, it promoted and implemented a package of Sustainable Agricultural Land Management (SALM) practices within smallholder farming systems and generated GHG removals through soil and tree carbon sequestration.
The project achieved its goal by using a holistic and focused farm enterprise extension approach and by supporting farmer groups to establish village savings and loan associations carbon credits have been generated and claimed using the approved VCS methodology VM0017: Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Land Management. The methodology is specifically addressing the need for a robust but cost-efficient monitoring system and the need to assist smallholder farmer to reach their objectives (productivity, food security and climate resilience).
The project proponent – the NGO Vi Agroforestry – has promoted the adoption of SALM practices on approximately 45,000 ha in Nyanza and Western Provinces such as use of residues for mulching and composting, cover crops, water harvesting, terracing and agroforestry to restore soil fertility, improve resilience and sequester carbon.
Benefits
Vi Agroforestry aimed at increasing productivity of smallholder farmers and enhancing their resilience to climate change, while carbon sequestration was considered as a co-benefit that has be marketed. The project was undertaken by 3,000 registered farmer groups with about 60,000 small-scale subsistence farmers who carried out mixed-cropping systems on 45,000 ha.