Efforts towards mitigating green house gas emissions should help resource-poor farmers to not only decrease the environmental footprint of their small-scale livestock and whole-farm production systems but to simultaneously increase productivity and improve their livelihoods. Continue reading
In this blog, one of the most recent Mazingira members, Sonja Leitner (Postdoctoral researcher, soil ecologist) who started with the team on 1st March 2018, shares an experience of her first field trip to Tanzania. From 25-30/03/2018, I joined Lutz Merbold and Phyllis Ndung’u on a field trip to Tanzania, where we visited different smallholder … Continue reading
Plant litter represents a major carbon pool in the global carbon cycle and accurate estimates of litter decomposition resulting in a major flux of CO2 to the atmosphere will allow to better constrain carbon turnover in ecosystems. Therefore a global approach – the TeaComposition Initiative – was taken (more info here: TeaComposition). In brief, within … Continue reading
After having spent one year in the field and following approximately 1000 cattle from smallholder farmers, Alice Onyango, John Patrick Goopy and colleagues present improved emission factors for enteric methane emissions from smallholder cattle in Nyando Kenya. The study, recently published in Agricultural Systems not only provides TIER 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission estimates, but … Continue reading
This years Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Conference 2017 took place from 27th-30th November 2017 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The conference brought policy makers, NGOs and scientists together to discuss the progress being made in implementing CSA primarily in developing countries. Each day was organized around plenary sessions and followed by parallel focused sessions in the … Continue reading
Following a grant awarded by Climate, Food and Farming Network (CLIFF) 2017, we, Joseph Macharia and Jane Gitonga got an opportunity to attend the CLIFF workshop held in Cologne, Germany between 7th November and 11th November 2017. The CLIFF Research Network: a capacity-building program for PhD/Masters students from developing countries under the umbrella of Climate … Continue reading
On 29 May to 1 June 2017, a team of scientists and other stakeholders in environmental research convened at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi to discuss environmental research infrastructures in Africa. This was a kick-off meeting of the project —Supporting EU-African Cooperation on Research Infrastructures for Food Security and Greenhouse gas observations (SEACRIFOG) — funded by the European Union under the Horizon2020 program. Continue reading
