What works to strengthen climate resilience for smallholder farmers? Evidence from Kenya
Smallholder farmers face increasing climate uncertainty that makes investing in agriculture both more important and more risky. Droughts, erratic rainfall, and other weather shocks threaten crop production, while rising input costs and volatile markets make it difficult to recover from a poor harvest. As a result, many farmers hesitate to invest in technologies that could improve productivity and resilience, including crop insurance, stress-tolerant crop varieties, agronomic advice, and other productivity-enhancing innovations.
Many of these technologies already exist, yet adoption remains low. Insurance products may not inspire confidence, farmers may not understand how different technologies complement one another, digital advisory services may fail to engage users, and women often face additional barriers to accessing agricultural services and participating in agricultural decision-making. Strengthening farmers' resilience therefore requires more than developing new technologies—it also requires designing, delivering, and scaling them in ways that reflect how farmers make decisions and the constraints they face.
To better understand how to strengthen farmers' resilience to climate-related risks, researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Wageningen University partnered with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise (ACRE Africa), and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) to evaluate a package of innovations across seven counties in Kenya. Through randomized evaluations and complementary qualitative research involving more than 6,000 smallholder farmers, the partnership generated evidence on how the design, delivery, and accessibility of agricultural risk-management tools influence farmers' adoption decisions and resilience to climate shocks.
This brief synthesizes the key lessons and highlights their implications for governments, insurers, agricultural service providers, and development partners.
Authors
Kramer, Berber; Waithaka, Lilian; Kivuva, Benjamin; Cecchi, Francesco
Citation
Kramer, Berber; Waithaka, Lilian; Kivuva, Benjamin; and Cecchi, Francesco. 2026. What works to strengthen climate resilience for smallholder farmers? Evidence from Kenya. Washington, DC: Innovations for Poverty Action. https://poverty-action.org/what-works-strengthen-climate-resilience-smallholder-farmers-evidence-kenya
Keywords
Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Eastern Africa; Climate Resilience; Climate Change; Resilience; Smallholders; Randomized Controlled Trials; Risk Reduction; Insurance; Gender
Project
Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security
