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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Waste Management in Agroecosystems
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1409457
This article is part of the Research Topic RAMIRAN 2023: Managing Organic Resources in a Changing Environment View all 14 articles

Assessment of trade-off balance of maize stover use for bioenergy and soil erosion mitigation in Western Kenya

Provisionally accepted
Keiji JINDO Keiji JINDO 1*Golaleh Ghaffari Golaleh Ghaffari 2Manisha Lamichhane Manisha Lamichhane 3Asher Lazarus Asher Lazarus 2Yoshito Sawada Yoshito Sawada 4Hans Langeveld Hans Langeveld 2
  • 1 Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
  • 2 Biomass Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
  • 3 Biomass Research, wageningen, Netherlands
  • 4 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Tokyo, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study focuses on sustainable resource management for the area of Kakamega Forest, the country's last tropical rainforest, which is endangered by escalating demands for firewood, charcoal, and agricultural expansion due to population growth. It evaluates anaerobic digestion (AD) using maize stover, a prevalent lignocellulosic crop residue, as a promising source for biogas and bioslurry production. However, the removal of maize stover for biogas production challenges soil fertility and erosion control. This study assesses the trade-off between using maize stover for energy generation, replacing firewood, and soil erosion mitigation in Western Kenya, considering both biophysical conditions and households' socio-economic status. The socio-economic data was collected from 91 households to assess energy usage. Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) was used for soil erosion assessment. The study also integrated high-resolution remote sensing, self-organizing maps (SOM), and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to monitor field conditions annually. A decision-tree machine learning model identified farm characteristics favorable for maize stover's biogas use. Findings show larger households consume more energy per capita. Proximity to forests did not significantly affect firewood or charcoal consumption. Maize yields varied with land preparation techniques tractor, oxcart and manual plouwing) (p < 0.001) and field size (p < 0.05), while the distance between homesteads and fields significantly impacted crop growth status monitored by remote-sensing. RUSLE indicated soil erosion is influenced more by landscape than soil properties or farming methods. The integration of SOM-HMM and microsatellite data enhances field monitoring and data precision, offering insights into sustainable agricultural practices in Kakamega.

    Keywords: Bioslurry, crop residues, deforestation, Energy, Remote-sensing, Smallholder farmers

    Received: 30 Mar 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 JINDO, Ghaffari, Lamichhane, Lazarus, Sawada and Langeveld. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Keiji JINDO, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.