The 2011 drought in Kenya was declared a national disaster by President Mwai Kibaki in April of 2011. Access to food and water had become very scarce, millions of livestock have died, and territorial violence had increased drastically as people competed for patches of fertile land. When nourishment could be found, heightened demand raised prices and made staple goods difficult to obtain. On June 28th of that year, the United Nations reported that 3.5 million people weere in need of humanitarian relief.
The hub of AMURT’s agroecology project in Burkina Faso is the Bissiri model farm and training center located 60 kilometers from the capital, Ouagadougou. The farm demonstrates sustainable technologies such as agro-ecology, agroforestry, crop rotation, integrated pest management, composting, and live fencing.