Identification of Suitable Areas for Growing Biofuel Crops

Crop-land suitability analysis is a prerequisite to achieve optimum utilization of the available land resources for sustainable agricultural production. It involves the evaluation of the criteria ranging from soil, terrain to socio-economic, market and infrastructure. One of the most important and urgent problems in Kenya is to improve agricultural land management and cropping patterns to increase the agricultural production with efficient use of land resources. The aim of this study was to determine physical land suitability for Jatropha curcas using Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) & GIS Analysis functions. The study was carried out in Kitui and Mwingi districts of Eastern province, Kenya. Relevant biophysical variables of soil, climate and topography were considered for suitability analysis. Suitability evaluation for Jatropha in this study is based on rating the biophysical variables.