For Kelle Gregory, a farmer in the Upper West region of Ghana, farming had become just plain hard. Kelle and his neighbors face parched and eroding soils, government policies inviting corporate GMO seeds, and low prices for their harvests.

“In the past decade, I have witnessed increasing trends of degradation in my community.”

– Kelle Gregory

Skidding towards hunger and poverty, they joined the farmers’ organization, CIKOD. They learned to mulch, intercrop legumes with grains, and apply agroforestry techniques. Now, Kelle and other farmers are restoring moisture to the Sahel soil and shifting away from chemically-intensive agriculture.

Funded in part by a grant from the AgroEcology Fund, CIKOD also allied with a coalition of Ghanaian NGOs to block pro-GMO legislation, enabling farmers to retain control over their seeds. By joining hands with the African Food Sovereignty Alliance, organized farmers seek to influence the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and spread agroecology across the continent.