Kenya’s agricultural sector faces unprecedented threats, including unsustainable agricultural practices, soil degradation, adverse effects of climate change and declining productivity due to extensive use of toxic agrochemicals. 

These threats call for the need to transform the country’s food system in a manner that is eco-friendly, resilient, and just by shifting to agroecological production practices as opposed to conventional practices rooted in synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and hybrid seeds. 

Meeting the country’s food security and nutrition needs requires integration of ecological principles into farming to restore soil health, enhance biodiversity protection, and strengthen resilience to climate variability. Despite its numerous benefits, the adoption of agroecology in Kenya remains limited due to several factors, including limited access to organic inputs, inadequate technical support, low awareness among policy and decision makers, subsidy bias towards industrial agriculture, and market and policy barriers.

 For the country to achieve its food security and nutrition needs while also addressing the triple planetary crisis of pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss, there is an urgent need to integrate agroecology across all sectoral plans, policies and strategies at national and county level, bolster public investment in agroecology, enhance research, extension, and knowledge sharing on agroecology and establish structured markets and certification systems for agroecological produce to enhance farmers’ income.

This policy brief is intended for decision makers at the national and county government levels, particularly the ministries of agriculture, environment and planning and economic development, and other relevant agencies and departments.