Examining the Relationship Between Drought Trends and Food Crop Production in Siaya County, Kenya

Abstract

Over the years and throughout the earth’s history, drought has occurred in both temporal and spatial scales indicating climate change.  Siaya County experiences drought that is largely attributed to climate change. These drought events lead to total crop failure or significantly reduce the yield of rainfed crops such as maize, beans, sweet potatoes, cassava and sorghum causing persistent food insecurity. The study examined the relationship between drought trends and food crop production in Siaya County. The research designs are composed of correlational and descriptive designs. Purposive sampling was employed based on the relevance of the source of data for the study. Secondary data mainly of annual rainfall and temperature (1992 – 2022) was acquired from the Kenya Meteorological Department. Annual food crop yield data (2012 – 2022) was sourced from the Department of Agriculture, irrigation, food, livestock and fisheries, County government of Siaya. Analysis methods involved Times series, Man-Kendall, descriptive, inferential analysis to examine annual precipitation, temperature and annual crop yield. Drought was analyzed using Standardized Precipitation Index. Findings reveal that there was a strong negative relationship between drought occurrences and food crops production with a correlation coefficient of -0.540, significant at 0.05, p value = 0.05. This indicates that increased drought trends led to reduction in annual food crop production which declined to 288,990.9 metric tons. There is need for relevant authorities such as KALRO and the departments of Agriculture to increase resources and efforts in educating the small-scale farmers on sustainable corrective drought risk reduction approaches to enhance food crop yield. The findings from this study will help small scale farmers better understand current drought trends and strengthen their capacities to increase production of food crops. Additionally, evidence-based policies can be informed from these findings to foster a risk sensitive development on food security