he OWA laureate Rachel Agola is a 38-year-old farmer, married and a mother of 5 children, living in Yenga village in Western Kenya. And she is an innovator in her district. Rachel Agola was among the
first to adopt the Push-Pull farming method to improve maize cultivation on her ¾ acre farm, on which she also grows various vegetables and keeps a dairy cow and a few sheep. The Push-Pull organic method, presented below under the Biovision-supported projects, resulted from local research undertaken by icipe.
Previously, Rachel Agola’s maize crop was only 35kg because her farm – typical of smallholder farms in Kenya -- was decimated by the parasitic striga weed and stemborer insects and suffered from very poor soil fertility. After learning about the method from icipe, she planted her first Push-Pull plot in 2007.
