George Munene

The iCow Soil Advocacy programme is pursuing the change of farming practices by equipping agronomists and trainers in how to restore soil to lift smallholders’ yields. As a reporter with a background in agriculture, I enrolled in the programme to gain firsthand insight—and it turned out to be transformative. I first learned about the programme

Hand-held soil scanners are reducing the cost of soil tests for farmers by more than half and the time it takes to get their soil test information from weeks to just 10 minutes. Introduced by the Dutch Company AgroCares, the handheld scanner gives farmers an on-the-spot report of their soil and recommends what fertilisers they

The rise of jam, juices and foods from gathered prickly pears could now develop into widespread cactus farming, with farmers in China’s arid areas now producing nearly 3 tonnes a hectare of foods and feeds with almost no rain by planting and harvesting the apple cactus. The farmers are harvesting 2.8 tonnes a hectare of

Growing jack beans, farmers get a double shot in high protein food for their families and a doubling of the yield of their other crops as the bean restores health to rapidly degrading soils by cooling the soil, providing a soil erosion stopper, and adding green manure. Every year African soils lose up to 60kg

Solar dryers, affordable for groups of farmers, are slashing drying times by 48 hours saving 36 per cent of after-harvest crop losses. Marketed in East Africa by GrainPro, Solar Bubble Dryers dry grains, pulses, and vegetables even under rain in a protective bubble in just two to eight hours rather than the typical 54 hours

Maize storage bag manufacturers are helping farmers avoid half of after-harvest losses using revolutionary rodent-repelling bags that keep off the two main thieves of stored grains;  insects, and rats. In Kenya’s main maize-growing regions, rodents were second to small insects as the main causes of farmer losses after harvest. The country loses an estimated half