NAIROBI, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- Coffee plants grow among taller trees on a farm in Murang'a County, central Kenya, where the leafy canopy provides shade and helps retain soil moisture. In the fields, farmers are replacing some synthetic fertilizers with organic alternatives to improve soil health and reduce production costs.
These practices are part of efforts by local smallholder farmers to adapt to changing climatic conditions and rising agricultural costs.
Kenyan entrepreneur Godfrey Noel is exploring how digital technology and climate finance can help make such changes more accessible to farmers.
In September, Noel and his team won gold at the final of the Global AgriInno Challenge 2026 in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, with their AgriKonnekt project, which seeks to connect smallholder farmers in East Africa through digital agricultural services.
The project provides measurement, reporting and verification services to cooperatives, farmer organizations and financial institutions. By collecting and verifying data on farming practices, the team aims to assess their environmental benefits and help link those benefits to climate finance.
For Noel, the challenge is not simply encouraging farmers to adopt more sustainable practices, but also ensuring they have the resources to do so.
Noel noted that smallholder farmers face mounting pressure from unpredictable rainfall, extreme weather events, rising input costs and deteriorating soil conditions, all of which can undermine agricultural productivity and household incomes.
"Climate finance has a lot of money, but to get that money into agriculture, you have to demonstrate the environmental benefits of these practices and show that the data is credible and verifiable," Noel said.
His team has developed a digital platform to collect and analyze farm-level information and generate reports. Internet of Things (IoT) devices installed on farms gather basic data, including soil pH and moisture levels, while satellite data provides an additional means of monitoring and verification.
By combining ground-based measurements with satellite observations, the system seeks to establish a more reliable picture of farming practices and their environmental impact.
The verified data is then submitted to climate finance providers for assessment. Once approved, funding is channeled to provide farmers with inputs such as organic fertilizers, seedlings and seeds at no cost to them, according to Noel.
The arrangement is intended to ease farmers' financial burden while encouraging practices that can improve soil conditions and support more resilient agricultural production, Noel added.
The project currently covers about 2,000 farmers in Kenya. Noel said the team works with cooperatives and community-based organizations to reach more farmers and strengthen local accountability. It aims to expand its reach to at least 12,000 farmers across Kenya, Uganda and other areas over the next 12 months.
For Irene Kabochi, chief executive officer of Murang'a Farmers Cooperative Union, helping farmers adapt to changing weather patterns has become an increasingly important priority.
"We want to proactively help farmers prepare for changing climatic conditions and take measures to mitigate the effects of climate change," she said.
Kabochi said the team's data services and agricultural technology support could help cooperatives collect and analyze farm information, laying the groundwork for accessing climate finance.
The cooperative is working with Noel's team to diversify agricultural production beyond coffee by introducing crops such as macadamia and avocado. It is providing seedlings to farmers and plans to establish a demonstration farm to explore farming methods better suited to local climatic conditions.
For Simon Macharia, a farmer who has grown coffee for more than a decade, access to quality seedlings has offered a practical incentive to improve production.
The coffee seedlings he received free of charge through the project have encouraged him to consider how better planting materials and improved cultivation methods could raise yields.
He added that farmers participating in the project had begun trying more scientific and environmentally friendly cultivation practices, seeking to reduce chemical use, improve farm ecology, and lower production costs.
"For us farmers, we need to protect the land while also making farming more profitable," he said.
During Noel's visit to Hangzhou for the competition, Noel toured agricultural technology exhibitions and visited institutions including Zhejiang University.
A visit to a greenhouse particularly caught his attention. He saw a specialized growing medium containing multiple nutrients to support plant growth, which led him to think about the challenges facing Kenya's arid and semi-arid regions.
Large areas of northern Kenya, including Turkana, face difficult conditions for crop production, Noel said.
He believes that exploring suitable protected-farming systems and cultivation technologies could offer additional options for food production, provided they are adapted to local environments.
His team is also following developments in Chinese agricultural IoT technology, with an eye toward solutions that can function in remote Kenyan areas where electricity supplies and network connectivity are unreliable.
Noel added that linking environmental protection with tangible economic benefits for farmers is key to encouraging the wider adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and ensuring their long-term viability. ■