Assessing and Monitoring of the Main Contributors to the Declining Food Production and Food Security, Case Study Kieni-Sub County: Kenya

Kibungà Eunice Wanjiru^1, and Thomas. G. Ngigi¹

¹Department of Geomatic Engineering and Geospatial Information Systems, Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya

Cite this paper

Kibungà Eunice Wanjiru and Thomas. G. Ngigi. Assessing and Monitoring of the Main Contributors to the Declining Food Production and Food Security, Case Study Kieni-Sub County: Kenya. Journal of Food Security. 2017; 5(3):88-99. doi: 10.12691/JFS-5-3-4

Abstract

Kenya, like most parts of the world, is experiencing low food production which is leading to food Insecurity. This has a great significance in the livelihoods of the locals due to low food production and insecurity. An analysis of trends in rainfall patterns, extreme and or slow onset events, crop failure, health and crop vigor throughout the growing period, reduced food production units in the farms, points to clear evidence of some of the key contributors to low and reduced food production in many areas. The purpose of the study is to assess and monitor the key contributors to reduced/low food production in the area of study through the classification of land use land cover of the area to analyze the area extent of farm lands or cropped areas over time and determine the shift in usage, Vegetation health and vigor of the study area over time ,the impacts of the rainfall factors on food production by; estimating the annual rainfall amounts, distribution and trends over a period of time, Crop yields over a continuous period of time. Landsat satellite images were used for the years 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015 for Land cover Land use classification and NDVI, rainfall data used was CHIPRS analyzed using GeoClim and food production data from Harvest Choice analyzed in excel. This study determined that indeed the area of study has recorded reduced food production, a lot of conversions from land use initially on food crops to other uses, change and decreased rainfall as the main contributors to the problem.

Keywords

land cover land use, food production, vegetation index, satellite imagery and data

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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