Helping Smallholder Farmers Diversify in Kenya

Farmers in the Butere-Mumias district of western Kenya face challenges that threaten their livelihoods and existence. Sugarcane, the area's main cash crop, does not provide enough income for farmers to pay basic family expenses such as education and home maintenance. The situation is especially challenging for women, who traditionally are responsible for feeding their families but do not have discretion on how income is spent.

In 2004, the Monsanto Fund began collaborating with a local Rural Outreach Program. This program is enhancing the quality of life for families in Butere-Mumias by helping them improve income and nutrition through dairy production. Through our grant, the organization provided a hundred women with dairy cows. Before taking part in the program, each family took several actions to demonstrate their commitment. They participated in a five-day workshop to learn how to care for the cow, prepared an acre of land with appropriate grazing grasses, and constructed sturdy cowsheds.

Through this program, community members also help each other. When the first female calf is born, it is given to the next community member who wants to join the program. Thus, the project grows exponentially throughout the community.

The project is already improving the lives of women in Butere-Mumias. "This is a community which tends to marginalize women," said Professor Ruth Oniang'o, founder of the Rural Outreach Program. "But it is also a community where every household wants to have a cow. The fact that a cow has come home through the woman has truly elevated the status of women in this community."

$120,000
In 2004, the Monsanto Fund paid $120,000 to the Rural Outreach Program to improve nutrition in Kenya.