The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to Food in the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and has since said that it is vital for the enjoyment of all other rights. Further, the right to food is also entrenched in the Bill of rights, on chapter 4 of the Constitution on Kenya, promulgated in 2010. Food security has four pillars:

• Availability – there is a reliable and consistent source of quality food.
• Access – People have sufficient resources to produce and/ or purchase food.
• Utility – People have the knowledge and basic sanitary conditions to choose, prepare and distribute food in a way that results in good nutrition.
• Stability – People’s ability to access and utilize food that remains stable and sustained over time.

ADSE applied these four pillars during the implementation period of the previous strategic plan. The strategic objective of this program was to “increase agricultural productivity and incomes for smallholder farmers in the target areas for a period of five years”. The program intended to reach 100,000 households with 17% having increased agricultural productivity and incomes.

ver the period, the program applied different strategies to reach out to the target beneficiaries, which included Crop Production, Livestock production and use of village savings and loan association.

a) On crop production, different value chains including drought-tolerant crops (cowpeas, sorghum, green grams, and finger millet), local vegetables (kales, tomatoes etc.) were promoted and 115,538 smallholder farmers trained on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), business development, soil fertility management and Agro-nutrition. The project linked 8, 200 smallholder farmers to financial institutions for agricultural financing and farmer accessed a total value of Kshs 14 M agricultural loan. Because of increased agricultural productivity, 34,600 (Thirty-Four Thousand, Six Hundred) farmers were linked to profitable output markets and 23 aggregation centres established for collective marketing.

On livestock production, dairy and small livestock (goats and poultry) value chains were promoted and 38,067 farmers were trained on livestock improvement initiatives including pasture development, feed formulation and housing. The program built the capacity of 15 dairy cooperatives on management, feed formulation, value addition and livestock improved through Artificial insemination.

To increase households incomes the program focused on the formation of village saving and Loaning Schemes and reached 25,376 households over a period of five years. Through this initiative, the households were able to save and borrow money to start a small-scale business. The total savings and loans under circulation amounted to Ksh 30 Million.