A Tree Planting Project: Environmentally Sustaining Smallholder Farming

Many of the Kenyan farmers that work through with Rural Development Connections (RDC) have cut down the trees over the years to make charcoal. For a farming family in Rural Kenya, charcoal is used as the predominant fuel for cooking and heating one’s home. In the past trees are not seen as a thing of natural beauty, yet as a means of survival. However, by cutting down so many trees biodiversity, soil strength and crop health on the farms have been compromised. The trees used to provide a shade canopy over the coffee trees, ensuring that they did not burn form the harsh rays of the equatorial sun. In addition by cutting down indigenous old growth trees, the farmers inadvertently have contributed to global warming by destroying some of the natural forests that offset human carbon dioxide pollution.

RDC is launching a Tree Planting Project as part of its sustainable farming program to counteract the environmental damage done. RDC’s aims to plant 500 indigenous and tropical trees in a farming community outside of Nyeri Town, Central Province, Kenya. The trees planted -- such as the indigenous Wild Fig that has deep roots able to pierce bedrock, bringing water to surface -- are expected to assist in encouraging the reintroduction of biodiversity on the farms, strengthen the soil and prevent mineral loss and erosion and provide the much needed shade of coffee trees.

RDC will develop a tress sapling nursery where young trees can be raised by the farming community until old enough to be planted into the farms. Each farmer will be responsible for the trees on his/her own farm and be expected to care for it through the years to come. As significant way of enticing the farmers to care for their trees and not cut them down in the future, RDC will teach the farmers the benefits of environmental farming in the Farmer Education Resource Center and look to trade carbon credits of the trees through the international markets as an alternative income.

During recent years the international community has become more concerned with global warming and the affects tress can have in offsetting Carbon Dioxide emissions from pollution. According to the most recent Economist, Carbon Credits are trading for approximately 30USD a ton. RDC farmer beneficiaries have a median of 100 coffee trees per farm, which may sequester roughly .5 tons of CO2 a year[1]. While coffee trees are often pruned to around six feet for ease of harvest and have a narrow trunk diameter (defining the CO2 sequestration rate) other taller trees with wider trunks such as many indigenous trees sequester heavier amounts of CO2. By planting indigenous trees, RDC hopes to increase each farmed acre CO2 sequestration rate to minimum of 2 tons a year and in the future trade these carbon credits on the international market on behalf of the farmers.

To donate funds to support Rural Development Connection’s Tree Planting Project see or for more information please contact Shannon Mulholland at info@ruraldevelopmentconnections.org

[1] The CO2 sequester calculation completed using an algorithm developed by research by Trees for the Future: http://www.treesftf.org/