Cassava, once seen as a crop for desperate times, is now the heartbeat of a quiet agricultural revolution reshaping the fortunes of dryland farmers in this part of Kenya's Rift Valley.
Thanks to climate-smart innovations and renewed interest in drought-resilient crops, cassava has emerged as a lifeline for hundreds of families living in the valley's semi-arid belt, where unreliable rainfall and frequent dry spells have historically made farming a gamble. "I used to plant maize year in, year out but every time the rains failed, so did my harvest," says Rebecca Kilimo, a smallholder farmer from Tot in the lower Kerio Valley. "In 2019, I tried cassava for the first time after a training by the Ministry of Agriculture and local extension officers.
That changed my life," she said.
Today, Rebecca tends to a two-acre cassava farm, harvesting tubers that are not only drought-tolerant but also fetch good prices in local markets.
