How farmers in Lake Victoria Basin are restoring their landscape and their future

For years, the fields around Agoro East in Nyakach, Kisumu County, remained, open, undefined and underutilized due to unclear boundaries and its primary use as open grazing land. This lack of structure fuelled recurring conflicts with neighbouring communities over livestock, often resulting in the loss of lives and livelihoods.

“We were farming alone, and we were losing,” says Samuel Ouma, one of the farmers. “The land was tired and so were we.”

That story began to change in 2022, when farmers in Agoro East made an unusual decision: instead of dividing the land further, they chose to bring it together.

From conflict to collective prosperity: The Agoro East success

Through a voluntary, community-led process, 108 farmers pooled their individual plots into a single, collectively managed 52-acre farm, forming the Agoro East Aggregated Farm (AEAF). Supported by the CGIAR Nature Positive Initiative and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, the initiative introduced a new way of thinking about land, not as isolated plots, but as a shared landscape.

“Once we agreed to work as one, everything changed,” Philip Okinyo, Agoro East Aggregated Farm chairperson, explains. “We could plan better, grow more, and protect the soil.”

Pooling land allowed farmers to benefit from economies of scale, adopt diversified cropping systems, and experiment with enterprises that were previously out of reach. The community began restoring soil health by planting leguminous crops and moved beyond subsistence farming to introduce dairy goats, poultry, and fish farming.

Indeed, the land responded and so did livelihoods.

Carlo Fadda, a Research Lead on Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, noted that the global challenge of land degradation and food insecurity cannot be solved through isolated technological fixes alone. It requires integrated, community-led solutions that restore ecosystems while improving livelihoods. In Nyakach, Kisumu County, Kenya, a pioneering model of voluntary land pooling is demonstrating how innovation bundles - a core strategy of the CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Program (MFL) - can convert fragmented, underutilized land into productive, resilient landscapes.

When the land recovers, so do livelihoods

Today, yields are higher, incomes more stable, and conflicts far less frequent. Where open grazing once degraded the soil, structured land management has improved productivity and resilience. More importantly, trust has grown.

Agoro East’s transformation is a powerful reminder that land restoration is not only about ecology—it is about people, relationships, and collective choices.

A local story with global lessons

What is happening in Nyakach reflects a broader approach being advanced by the CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program, which promotes “innovation bundles”—integrated sets of social, ecological, and economic solutions designed and tested within real communities.

Under the MLP approach, places like Agoro East become “Living Landscapes”: action-learning sites where farmers, researchers, and local institutions jointly develop solutions that balance food production, ecosystem restoration, and livelihoods. These bundles go beyond technologies to include innovations such as collective land governance, specialised farmer groups, and transparent financial systems that allow communities to track costs and benefits.

Core elements of the innovation bundle include:

1. Living Landscapes: MFL establishes “Living Landscapes” as action-learning sites where farmers, researchers, policymakers, and private-sector actors co-design, test, and refine context-specific solutions.
2. Socio-ecological innovations: Beyond technologies, the program promotes institutional innovations such as collective land governance arrangements and specialised farmer groups with dedicated bank accounts—allowing transparent tracking of costs, benefits, and returns.
3. Economic viability: By monetising ecosystem services and creating green business opportunities, the MLP aligns restoration with income generation. Globally, restoring land ecosystems has the potential to generate annual returns estimated at US$125–140 trillion.

Crucially, the approach makes restoration economically viable. By linking healthy ecosystems to income-generating activities and green enterprises, farmers are no longer asked to choose between conservation and survival.

Scaling hope across landscapes

Kenya, like many countries across Africa, faces increasingly unpredictable rainfall and growing pressure on land. The Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program is designed to scale successes like Agoro East across priority countries—reaching 2 million farmers in 15 countries, restoring 4 million hectares of degraded land, and conserving over 98 percent of agrobiodiversity in targeted landscapes by 2030.

For farmers in Agoro East, those global targets feel close to home.

“We used to think our land had no future,” reflects Evelyn Akoth, one of the farmers and chairperson of Kabudi-Agoro Community Seed Bank of farmer. “Now, we are planning for our children.”

From one farm to many futures

The Agoro East Aggregated Farm illustrates that when farmers are empowered to manage land collectively and holistically, they can overcome the long-standing challenge of land fragmentation. As the Multifunctional Landscapes Program embeds these lessons into its global framework, the transition to biodiverse, productive, and climate-resilient landscapes becomes not only possible, but scalable—offering a viable pathway for millions of smallholder farmers worldwide.

Read a related article: https://businessnow.co.ke/how-voluntary-land-pooling-is-growing-food-production/

Authors: Ojanji, Wandera. and Masso, Cargele