A livelihood success story: kenyan farmer coop taps iron beans for increased incomes

The members of the Abossi Top Hill cooperative farming society in Kenya’s Bomet County have a good problem: there is too much demand for their iron-biofortified beans.

In just a few years, the expanding Abossi coop membership has turned their iron bean production project into a profitable enterprise which is noticeably improving their livelihoods as well as their nutrition. The coop is in a low-income rural region where farming households have traditionally stuggled to generate sufficient earnings from surplus harvest and cash crops. Through the Commercialisation of Biofortified Crops (CBC) programme, which is co-led by the CGIAR’s HarvestPlus program and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the community was introduced to iron beans in 2019.