Rooftop farming: why vertical gardening is blooming in Kampala

When a national park was created in Kenya, the local Waata hunter-gatherer community was displaced and forced to take refuge elsewhere while also adapting to a farming lifestyle. Choosing to cultivate pineapples because of their rapid growth rate, the women leading the farming practices initially struggled to be meaningfully compensated for their produce. After learning how about solar drying, however, the women saw a quick and lasting increase in their profits.

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.

The Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre nonprofit works with over 60,000 farmers across 300,000 acres of land, supporting individual farmers to restore unproductive land across the entire region by using regenerative agriculture practices. Techniques include using natural fertilizers and planting crops alongside trees and other plans to prevent desertification.

With support and training from the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund's World Food Program, an association of roughly 150 women in Matagelema, Sierra Leone have begun irrigating and farming inland valley swamps there for the first time. They are among more than 4,000 farmers now cultivating in the country's swamps, which provide a higher crop yield than upland farming and are located farther from conflict zones with the region's rutile miners.

Environmental degradation and drought have led to conflict, poverty, and severe food insecurity in Kenya’s Baringo county. Hand In Hand International is helping communities rebound by offering training to women in entrepreneurship and new farming methods - particularly beekeeping - which provides economic empowerment, improves the ecosystem by boosting pollinator populations, and provides a steady source of nutritious food for those families eking out a living in these harsh landscapes.

A group of agriculture producers think new, low-cost growing techniques, high-value crops and an increased interest in local produce offer solutions to New Mexico’s food struggles.

Algaculture offers a sustainable and empowering alternative to rice farming in coastal areas of India threatened by sea level rise. With the assistance of The Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research and the South Asian Forum for Environment, women engage in algae farming training workshops. Harvesting algae like a crop provides a vital source of additional income to women, who are often the caretakers of their family.

Community-led urban farms in Jakarta empower residents to transform underused city spaces like alleyways and campus grounds into productive local food sources. These initiatives often blend traditional gardening with community organizing, educational outreach, and sometimes smart technology or agricultural research to improve food access, enhance green space, and foster local resilience.

The Bangladesh Resource Center for Indigenous Knowledge runs a rice breeding initiative to preserve and encourage the planting of indigenous seeds. The program trains farmers how to problem solve, cultivate, and save the different seed varieties.

In Nigeria, climate change has led to food scarcity causing some farmers in rural Abuja communities to adopt sustainable agricultural practices. Also known as smart agriculture it encompasses things like reducing pesticide use, using extracts from neem plants, and using warm castings as a fertilizer. Farmers say the practice has improved the soil, increasing water retention, and sequestered carbon.