When Grow Biointensive Agriculture Centre of Kenya (G-BiACK) first started documenting agricultural practices in central Kenya back in 2009, the landscape looked very different from what we see today. Walking through the farms in Kiambu, Muranga, and Machakos counties, you’d encounter farmers heavily dependent on synthetic inputs, bags of chemical fertilizers stacked outside homesteads, empty pesticide containers scattered around, and soils that looked increasingly depleted despite the constant chemical additions.
The dependency was almost heartbreaking to witness. Farmers knew something wasn’t right. They talked about how their grandparents grew abundant crops without all these expensive inputs, how the rains seemed less predictable, how their children were getting sick more often. But they felt trapped. The extension officers told them to use more chemicals. The input dealers were always ready with new products. It was a cycle that kept getting more expensive and less effective.
That’s when G-BiACK stepped in with what many farmers initially dismissed as “going backwards.” The idea of double-digging beds by hand, making compost from kitchen scraps, saving seeds; it sounded like too much work for uncertain returns. What happened over the next 15 years changed the entire agricultural landscape of these three counties. This case study documents that transformation from the ground level, based on countless conversations with farmers, field visits, and witnessing the gradual but profound changes that occurred when communities embraced agroecological principles.
