Feed balance, land-cover and forage-quality data for Laikipia North and East, Kenya (2017, 2022, 2024)

This dataset supports a study of livestock feed balances in Laikipia North and Laikipia East sub-counties, Kenya, for a moderate-drought year (2017), a severe-drought year (2022) and a normal-rainfall year (2024). It contains: stratum-level dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP) and metabolizable energy (ME) supply, demand and balance by land-use system and land-cover class, with the inputs used (area, dry matter productivity, availability factors, forage quality and livestock numbers); contributions of area, supply per hectare and demand per hectare to changes in feed balance between years; CP and ME values for the representative forage and crop species in each land-cover class; root:shoot ratios and availability factors used to estimate livestock-accessible feed; land-use system boundaries digitized from the Laikipia County Spatial Plan (2023–2033); Sentinel-2 land-cover maps (10 m) for 2017, 2022 and 2024, with the training polygons and independent validation points used for classification and accuracy assessment. Feed supply was estimated from Copernicus dry matter productivity and livestock demand from FAOSTAT-calibrated gridded livestock data (Global Pasture Watch). Related article: Mwema et al., Beyond feed availability: spatial hotspots reveal crude protein as the primary nutritional constraint on livestock in Laikipia, Kenya, submitted to The Journal of Agricultural Science.