This Acorn project, run by our partner Cereal Grows Association in Kenya, supports over 40,300 smallholder farmers in Rift Valley and Lower Eastern regions.
Many counties in Kenya face persistent challenges due to chronic water shortages, erratic rainfall, frequent droughts, and environmental degradation. Smallholder farmers in these areas depend primarily on agriculture, which is increasingly threatened by the impacts of climate change, such as declining soil fertility and limited access to support services and markets. This has led to low agricultural productivity, heightened food insecurity, and high levels of poverty due to weak economic resilience. Many residents of the regions also experience ‘hardcore poverty’, meaning they are unable earn money for clothing, housing, and cannot afford education.
In recent years, the tree cover in these regions has diminished due to prolonged droughts, deforestation, and the conversion of land for agriculture. Population pressure, forest fires, and other human activities have further exacerbated the environmental strain. With climate change intensifying these challenges, large-scale afforestation efforts are critical to restoring ecosystems and enhancing agricultural sustainability.
Cereals Growers Association (CGA) is a national non-profit member-based farmer organization incorporated in August 1996. CGA’s mission is to bring together commercial cereal farmers to promote collective action and create higher bargaining power for the sustained improvement of their farming enterprises, while addressing industry challenges in Kenya.
CGA works with farmers through Farmer Service Center (FSCs). Currently the project is working with 300 FSCs with each FSC working with appropriately 100 farmers. CGA offers extension and advisory services to farmers through the establishment of learning centers and demo farms, farmer field days and trade fairs. They also offer affordable soil testing services through its associate member partnership to its farmer members. As part of the engagement approach, CGA also uses bulk SMS to communicate information to over 150,000 cereal farmers in their database.
To support smallholder farmers, the Cereal Growers’ Association (CGA) has been implementing the "Regenerative Agriculture" project in 10 counties in the Rift Valley Region, as well as in 2 counties in the Lower Eastern regions. Under the Acorn project, agroforestry practices will be introduced, integrating trees into farming systems to restore biodiversity and improve resilience. This will also help diversify farmer income sources – including income from carbon credits. Such regenerative agriculture practices are expected to restore soil fertility overtime and therefore improve farm productivity, which is expected to improve nutrition amongst farmers. The use of FSCs is designed to bridge the last mile gap in input and services delivery to farmers, which will help improve access of extension services, and ultimately improve production overtime. The project is also designed to deliberately target 60% women and 30% youth as its beneficiaries.
The project has already undertaken the following activities:
Click the links below to download the project's certification documents.
