Livelihood impacts of Calliandra calothyrsus and Sesbania sesban: Supplementary feed in smallholder dairy farms in Kenya
Bibliographic record
Abstract
An agroforestry land use system aimed at improving the productivity of smallholder dairy farms using Calliandra calothyrsus and Sesbania sesban shrubs as feed supplements was introduced to semi-commercial SDFs in Meru, Kenya, as part of a field trial. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of using the C. calothyrsus and S. sesban on family income and livelihoods during the 16-month trial period. Eighty farmers randomly allocated to four groups (nutrition, reproduction, combined nutrition and reproduction, and a comparison group) were enrolled in this study. The nutrition intervention included nutritional management advice and provision of 150 C. calothyrsus seedlings and 150 S. sesban seedlings to each farm. Farms were visited every 1-2 months during the trial to collect data on milk production and feeding practices during the previous day. Seventy of these farms completed the trial and were interviewed post-intervention. Partial budget analysis of their farms was done by comparing changes in average monthly profits (from milk) and feeding costs/cow for the first 6 months and last 6 months of the intervention. Focus group discussions were used to collect qualitative information on livelihood effects from the trial. There was a KES 2,380.3 (USD 23.5) increase in average monthly profit/cow in the nutrition group comparing the first and last 6 months of the trial, representing a 68.8% improvement (p = 0.02). Average feeding costs significantly decreased across all groups over the trial period. Knowledge on dairy cow nutrition, level of confidence on calf management, and feeling of empowerment to raise calves/heifers to achieve first calving by 27 months were higher among farmers in the nutrition and combined groups than farmers in the other groups. There were positive direct and indirect impacts on the income and livelihoods of farmers in the two groups receiving nutritional interventions. Agroforestry, using C. calothyrsus and S. sesban shrubs can improve household livelihoods if adopted by SDFs in Kenya. Key words: Smallholder dairy, agroforestry, partial budget analysis, leguminous shrubs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".