By Nyang’au Araka and FAO
When Agnes Barasa walks through her backyard garden today, she does so with the quiet confidence of someone who has beaten the odds.
She gently tucks in mulch around vibrant kale, tomatoes, and beans. Just a few years ago, this fertile patch was nothing but dry, cracked earth.
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“I’m a happy lady because my soil is yielding where it did not,” Agnes beams.
For more than 20 years, Agnes and her husband struggled to farm in Maeni village.
Their initial hopes were pinned on sugarcane, a crop that eventually led to disappointment through late payments and poor returns.
Switching to maize didn’t help either—monocropping and overuse of chemical fertilisers had quietly poisoned their soil.
The change began when Agnes enrolled in training offered by the BOOST project—a partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Government of Kenya, IFAD, and the European Union.
She learned something that changed everything: soils are alive, and like any living thing, they can fall ill and recover—with the right treatment.
Soil tests revealed her land was suffering from high acidity and low phosphorus—a death sentence for crops unless reversed.
Armed with this new knowledge, Agnes stopped burning residue, switched to organic mulch, made her own compost, and adopted techniques like intercropping, crop rotation, and integrated pest management.
Game changer
The result was a leap from 3 bags to 15 bags of maize in a single season.
Her once-barren backyard is now bursting with vegetables.
Her kitchen garden has become a lifeline—for both nutrition and income.
Agnes has now become a trainer for other farmers in her community, spreading the good soil gospel.
She dreams of expanding her garden to sell surplus vegetables at the local market while training more women to do the same.
“This is more than food for my family,” she says. “It’s about healing the land and lifting up my neighbours.”
Implemented in five counties—Bungoma, Kakamega, Homa Bay, Migori, and Nandi—the BOOST initiative is reaching over 40,000 farmers.
The program has established agroecology hubs—centres managed by youth that offer services like irrigation, composting, pest control, and soil analysis.
These hubs provide both employment to recent graduates and affordable support to farmers—ensuring the gains are sustainable across generations.
-This story was adapted from FAO website: https://www.fao.org/newsroom/story/resurrecting-dead-soils/en
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