Stories of impact: From the drought tolerant crops value chain

The Drought Tolerant Crops component of Feed the Future Kenya Accelerated Value Chain Development (AVCD) is a 3-year program (2015-18) working in Kenya to promote cereals and legumes that are not only climate smart but are also nutritious and offer an alternative to farmers in the drylands that have very few other options.

The program team has been working to ensure production of breeder and foundation seed of the new varieties. They worked with multiple stakeholders to establish diverse seed delivery channels to ensure rapid and wide access to high quality and affordable seed by smallholder farmers, especially women and the youth. The mandate crops — pigeonpea, cowpea, green grams, groundnut, sorghum, and millets — in this program component provides unique advantages for food and nutrition security, and livelihoods for farmers.

The stories contained in this document are an elaboration of the impact of the three years’ work of this project. The report covers efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change by ensuring that farm families have access to nutritious foods even in bad seasons, provide climate information to farmers, and make seed available for improved adoption of climate smart crops, among others.