This old lady's name is Mama Julia. She's got spunk. And she always has some tough questions for us – so should you!
What is the current status of One Acre Fund? How do I contact you?
Please see our new "About us" section, to the left.
What is the project area like? Why did we choose Kenya?
Our project area is located in rural Western Kenya, around the town of Bungoma (the Luhya tribal group). Our farmers have no access to electricity, water, and sanitation, but do have some limited road access. We chose this project area because rainfall is highly consistent (eliminating a large potential risk for our initial phase), the local government has been cooperative, and we have several active local technical advisors in this area. Kenya is ideal for our work because there are nearly 3 million farm families in the country that fit our stringent poverty criteria, who also have small farms of one acre or less.
Why do we ask our farmers to repay?
It is our firm belief that handouts do not solve problems, and only breed dependency. If our work is to last beyond one planting cycle, we need farmers to become proactive partners in their own future. We give farm families the tools to reach existing markets, creating a permanent solution that will last long after we are gone. By asking farmers to pay user fees, we slowly transition them to an unsubsidized, market interaction with the potential to permanently eradicate hunger.
Is four times gain in food yield really possible? Ten times gain in food value?
Yes. This is a conservative measure of the potential yield gain, verified by eight different field practitioners and by the actual experience of our members' own neighbors. Our farmers are currently getting harvests that technically qualify as "crop failure," and literally the only tool they use is a $4 hand-plow. By introducing basic farm inputs and education (used in the US a hundred years ago), we expect to dramatically increase their food yields in the first growing season. As we transition farmers into higher value crops, we ultimately hope to increase the economic value of food yields by 10-20 times over three years.
Isn't someone doing this already?
Many organizations do excellent work in places like rural Kenya, and we wish that we had more peers. However, what is little-known is that very few organizations work with the chronically hungry, the most severely poor people in the world. Starving clients are extremely difficult to work with, due to the multiple instabilities they have in their lives, and their day-by-day subsistence culture. We are able to serve these clients due to our comprehensive "market bundle," which bundles tools together with education and market access, meeting all of their unique needs. We will grow significantly slower than others as we focus on this population, but our core mission of ending hunger and improving child health is our first priority.
Are our seeds and fertilizer environmentally sensitive?
Yes, we take this very seriously. 1) Seed: Our farmers currently plant old food kernels from their prior harvest, resulting in very poor yields. The seed we use is commercially graded, quality-controlled, and selected for desirable properties, but is otherwise no different - it is produced in Kenya. 2) Fertilizer: we do use inorganic fertilizer to improve our farmers' land, which has been made barren by decades of farming. However, this fertilizer is hand-applied directly to the plant, in relatively small quantities, and there is thus little chance for Nitrogen runoff. In fact, better root development reduces topsoil erosion, a serious problem in our program area, and we estimate that our environmental impact is net-positive.
How many babies have been named after One Acre Fund staff?
One so far! One of our members named her beautiful newborn after Gladys, who is one of our most popular field officers. Help us to protect this small treasure.
