The holistic gardening project in Emuhaya, Western Kenya, is attracting local and international acclaim. Bio Gardening Innovations (BIOGI) is equipping smallholder farmers to break away from monocultures and create thriving, overflowing “food forests” on their farmland.

Maize, the staple crop of Vihaga and Kakamega counties in Kenya, is harvested twice a year with agrochemical farming techniques. However, as a growing population encroaches on the land, bush-clearing and aggressive farming practices are becoming the norm. The side effects are numerous. Soil exhaustion is common, to the detriment of the quality of each harvest’s yield. Farmers are rarely self-sufficient, relying on third parties to provide costly chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Further, the risks of monocultures are numerous, and it gives little diversity to the diets of the farmers who grow it. Partnering with the Tudor Trust and Pangea, BIOGI sought out local farmers who had already shown some interest in agroecology. Combining these farmers’ indigenous knowledge of the land with permaculture methods, they embarked on a project to turn maize fields into food forests.