NFU videos show how Farm Africa partnership is changing lives in Kenya

27 January 2012

Watch the videos here.

In 2008 Britain’s National Farmer’s Union (NFU) launched its Africa 100 Appeal to celebrate the organisation’s centenary. The appeal raised £200,000 which the NFU donated to Farm Africa.

Thanks to the NFU’s incredibly generous donation, Farm Africa has been able to set up its cassava project in Western Kenya. The project aims to breathe new life into cassava cultivation in Western Kenya following recent decimation of this staple crop by the Mosaic virus.

The project is having a huge impact and is transforming the lives of smallholder farmers and communities for the better. 

Success has been based on a simple idea: changing the cassava seed to grow new and improved varieties which are both resistant to disease and which can also stand up to the increasingly arid climate of Western Kenya.

The project  has made the success of the new cassava variety plain for all to see. By establishing demonstration plots for the new cassava alongside plots where the traditional cassava is grown, farmers can see not only how the new cassava variety matures far more quickly, but also how it produces healthier and larger tubers, convincing them to use the new seeds.

These videos powerfully demonstrate the impact the new cassava is having on communities in Western Kenya. They show project workers, and farmers, explaining how the new varieties produce three to four times more food than the traditional varieties.

Footage shows gasps of joy as farmers dig up their new cassava and discover far healthier and larger tubers. And as a project worker explains in one of the videos,

“Cassava has the potential to change the lives of our people”.

Watch the videos here.