Environmental Change and Maize Innovation in Kenya: Exploring pathways in and out of maize

Abstract

This paper summarises findings of the STEPS Environmental Change and Maize Innovation in Kenya project. Maize is an important staple crop in Kenya, socially, politically and economically. This project has taken maize as a window through which to explore differential responses to the combined and inter-related effects of climate change, market uncertainties and land use changes over time. It has traced innovations and responses of various actors – public agricultural research institutions, donors, development agencies, private companies and farmers. At issue is the way in which actors in different institutional, geographic and social locations understand and frame resilience – and how these framing assumptions shape agendas and steer solutions and resources in certain directions and not others.