After years of fighting a losing battle against weather conditions in Reru, a village in rural western Kenya, Mary Ogello was finally able to make peace with a climate that has been increasingly erratic, swinging wildly between extremes and serving up higher and higher temperatures.
When she was armed with detailed insights about things such as when the rainy season should begin and the likelihood of floods or drought, Ogello was able to make important decisions about the best crop varieties to plant and when to plant them, and to then select optimal times for weeding her crops and feeding them fertilizer.
The results she and her fellow farmers achieved were dramatic: yields for maize and sorghum were three to four times above normal.
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About the author
Bruce Campbell
Bruce Campbell is the director of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security and a staff member of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). He was previously based in Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Australia, where he has worked in agricultural and forestry research for development. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed articles and more than a dozen books.
