53-year-old Phoebe Mwangangi comes from the predominantly dryland areas of Makueni County in Eastern Kenya. She practices subsistence integrated farming on a four-acre of arable land used for crop production and a six-acre shrubland that is, for a month in a year, a grazing space after some precipitation.
Phoebe is one of the early adopters and lead farmers in her community, and has embraced climate-smart farming practices disseminated and scaled by the AICCRA project to build resilience for smallholder farmers.
Phoebe has been farming for over 20 years, mostly growing beans, pigeon peas and maize. She keeps a small flock of sheep and one dairy cow. She says the weather has changed significantly during this period, with longer and hotter dry seasons that destroyed her crops every year.