This was a higher score than that of sensitivity but lower than that of adaptive capacity. This can be associated with results of the contributing sub-components of adaptive capacity status used to compute index of this component.Most of the households in the study area did not have access to relief food. Sources of income for most of the households were agricultural related activities which are affected by rainfall variability contributing to their low income.Although majority of the households accessed seasonal climate information prior planting seasons, this did not contributed significantly to adaptation to rainfall variability due to their low income which may have hindered acquisition of the required farming inputs. Majority (97.4%) of the households lied in the level of “vulnerable”. There were no households in the two categories of “not vulnerable” and “extremely vulnerable”. Lack of extremely vulnerable households to rainfall variability maybe due to the fact that all households reported to have been having some adaptive capacity despite the high rate of exposure. However,vertical grow table households found even in the same agro-ecological zone can have different vulnerability levels largely due to variations in socio-economic characteristics such as gender and income levels .
A cross-tabulation between categorized levels of vulnerability and major socio-economic characteristics of households was done (Table 5). Despite most of the households being in vulnerability category (Table 4), this varied among various contributing factors to LVI. Female headed households had higher percentage (98.15%) of households in vulnerability than the male headed households (97.04%). No female headed household was less vulnerable as it was with male headed households. This shows that female headed households are generally more vulnerable compared to their male counterpart. This may be attributed to factors such as low size of cultivated land, low access to three meals in a day, shortages of seed for planting and lack of stock of crop to last households up to the next harvest.All household headed by people with primary and secondary level of education were found to be vulnerable with those with primary level taking lead. Surprisingly,despite vulnerability generally reducing with education level of the household head, 1.49% of those with non-formal education were less vulnerable and 29.41% of those with tertiary education being highly vulnerable. The occurrence of less vulnerable households among household heads with non-formal education may be due to the fact that this is the category which was leading in having stock of planting seeds and stock of food to last up to the next harvest.A comparison of vulnerability levels among different age groups revealed that 96.06% of households headed by people aged between 36 and 50 years were vulnerable.
Although this formed the majority of households,mobile vertical grow tables this result can be attributed to fewer years of experience in farming under variable rainfall conditions.Households headed by the aged (over 65 years) spread across the three levels of vulnerability. In this category, households who were less vulnerable could be attributed to many years of experience while those who were highly vulnerable may be due the fact majority lacked stock of crop to last them up to the next harvesting season and therefore majority lacking three meals in a day for most part the year.The level of vulnerability increased with number of members in households.For instance all households with members exceeding 15 were found to be vulnerable to rainfall variability. This may be associated with difficulties that such households have in getting sufficient provision for these large household members.However, less vulnerable households were found among those with between 11 and 15 members. This could be associated with adequate labour provided by such members in farmland and income from off-farm sources.Vulnerability generally decreased with increase in level of income of the households as the highly vulnerable were those whose income level was below 50,000 Kenya shillings. This may be attributed to availability of income sufficient to cushion such households against effects of rainfall variability. Surprisingly some households (2.97%) with high farming experience (over 20 years) were highly vulnerable.