Food Security: Green Grams Changing Lives in Eastern Kenya

To combat extreme weather, pests, and disease brought on by climate change, the Heritage Grape Project produces wines that aim to conserve and promote hybrid grapes, which are becoming a beneficial option to help local viticulturists grow grapes in an ecologically and economically sound manner.

Three biointensive mini-farms in the US are teaching small-scale farmers from throughout the world how to grow more food through sustainable practices that focus on using less water and land. After bringing these farmers onto the US farms to learn the methods through a hands-on approach, the farmers then return to their home countries to implement and encourage the biointensive practices.

For many food banks, the majority of the donations they receive are non-perishable goods, cans of food and other leftovers. Earth's Table grows produce for food banks in Boulder Colorado on privately-owned land that's been donated for the cause.

During the Industrial Revolution, farmers began harvesting monoculture crops which produced promising profits but proved harmful to the soil and weakened the immune capabilities of native plants. Lately, however, permaculture practices have been on the rise amongst farmers to better diversify their yields and reduce reliance on chemicals.

Production agriculture has put many small town, local farmers out of business, changing the landscape of the communities they've been pushed out of. One town in Missouri is fighting against this by joining together to preserve the importance of local control by nurturing a tradition of canning tomatoes.

Scalesia, is a species of tree native to the Galapagos Islands that is quickly disappearing thanks to human activity. With much of the island's wildlife dependent on this tree, the ecosystem is threatened with the tree's extinction. Conservationists have taken action, however, by planting thousands of the trees as part of a shade-grown coffee operation.

Green gram farming has lead to some promising results for communities in Eastern Kenya. Allowing for more crop diversity, this breakthrough has proved to be both a cash crop and a food crop, which provides economic stability and food security to the farmers in this region.

The Women’s Collective is a nonprofit that works with more than 10,000 subsistence farmers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to promote food security using millets, a crop resilient to drought and climate change. For Pavitra, one of those farmers, she began cultivating the ancient grains in 2015 and now has more than enough food to feed her family year-round. However, there’s a lack of public investment in millet production and machinery. And there’s no unified effort to create demand for millets: Some state governments lead the charge and in other states, it’s led by grassroots organizations.

Hundreds of seed-saving initiatives across the UK support the cultivation of “open pollinated seeds” in small plots and gardens to preserve future seed diversity. In contrast to static seeds in a bank, these seed-saving efforts focus on actually growing and sustaining seeds to provide security and more resilient crops. Open pollinated seeds reliably produce viable, true-to-type plants year after year so new seeds do not have to be purchased every season. Many “seed-savers” participate in seed circles where they exchange surplus seeds among small groups, enhancing the security and diversity of seeds.

Around the world, farmers are turning to permaculture and agrodiversity to create higher yields than chemical fertilizer while also avoiding the negative effects of conventional farming's focus on monocrop. Although results aren't fully conclusive, evidence does point to the success of low-impact farming strategies.