Agriculture is vital to East Africa's economy, but a 2025 soil report by the Heinrich Boll Foundation, a German think tank, found that more than 40 per cent of the region's soils were degraded.
This, it said, was in part due to the overuse of chemical fertilisers, and cost more than $65 billion a year in lost productivity.
Fertiliser prices have also increased in 2026 due to the war in the Middle East, driving a search for alternatives.
In Kenya, 32 per cent of cropland was classified as strongly acidic in the soil report, with changing climatic conditions and intensive farming practices also to blame.
Farmers, like George Muturi Kamau, have turned to worms and bugs as alternative, not only to improve their soil quality but also to meet a growing demand for organic food.
