Not long ago, many people thought Gladys Kanegeni was making a mistake.
While she faced the same pressures as many smallholder farmers in Kenya; declining soil health, uncertain harvests, and an income that was getting harder to rely on, Gladys refused to accept that as the new normal and resolved to try something different.
This decision meant transitioning away from chemical inputs. A move her neighbours in Kirinyaga County, Kenya couldn’t quite understand. For years, the prevailing belief was simple. More inputs meant a bigger harvest. For Gladys, however, this was a risk she felt she had to take.
Restoring The Land
Years of relying on chemical inputs had left her soil exhausted. Every season demanded more effort while producing less in return.
Through training from Enviu’s partners, Slow Food Kenya and Rainforest Alliance, she was introduced to regenerative agriculture. Rather than changing everything overnight, she took the wise approach of transitioning gradually, gaining learning and expertise over time. In due course, her soil was restored, her crops grew healthier, and the land became more productive.
What surprised her was how familiar it all felt. Practices like intercropping and protecting soil health have been part of farming communities for generations, before giving way to more intensive methods. Regenerative agriculture brings many of those practices back, paired with modern knowledge, to help farmers restore their land while building resilience to a changing climate.
As Gladys puts it, she’s simply,
“practicing a regenerative form of farming like we did in the old days, so that the soil’s health is restored.”
As her harvests continually improved, attention turned to the next challenge.
A Harvest Needs A Market
Better soil solved one problem. Turning that harvest into a steady income was the next one. This was a gap Enviu had already noticed.
Enviu had spent months visiting farmers across the region to speak to them and better understand why regenerative agriculture struggled to hold even when the training had been effective. Pests, water scarcity, and unreliable markets repeatedly came up. Restoring soil health on its own simply wasn’t enough. Without a market that rewarded the extra effort, farmers would revert once a harder season came, or the upfront cost of transitioning felt too risky to justify.
That insight led to the founding of Zawiri Foods, a venture built specifically to connect farmers like Gladys to buyers who valued regeneratively grown produce. Through Zawiri Foods, Gladys gained access to a reliable market. Knowing there was demand before she planted gave her the confidence to invest further in her farm. She focused on quality, improved her yields, and her outlook began to evolve. As she put it:
“This is meaningful work that keeps you thinking and challenges you…You need to take care of the plants to ensure a healthy harvest and maximize your returns.”
Gladys in conversation with some of the ladies in her community
These positive changes weren’t lost on Gladys’ community. Neighbours who had once questioned her decision saw healthier crops, better land, and a reliable income. Before long, more farmers began exploring regenerative agriculture themselves, and the results were evident especially amongst women. Earning more money enabled them to not only be stronger contributors to household finances but also have a surplus to pool into investment groups that empowered them even more.
Gladys’ experience was beginning to ripple far beyond her own farm.
Listening Before Building
Zawiri Foods CEO Kevin Thiong’o with Gladys at her farm.
Gladys’ story reflects a pattern Enviu saw repeated across many farmer conversations, and it’s exactly why Zawiri Foods was built the way it was. Before designing anything, Enviu runs an issue analysis. This is a structured way of mapping out a problem and the people affected by it, so that any solution is built on what’s actually missing rather than on assumptions. In practice, that means listening first and letting farmers define the problem, rather than starting with a solution already in mind. Once it was clear that soil work alone wouldn’t hold without a market to match it, building Zawiri Foods around that gap was the natural next step.
The results show this approach is bearing fruit. In 2025 alone, this regenerative model reached over 1,200 farmers, doubling the amount of farmland under regenerative practices compared to the year before. Incomes have gone up by 20–300%, biodiversity is returning, and young people and women are finding renewed purpose in agriculture. About 50% of participating farmers are women, many of whom are now leading local training groups and cooperative enterprises.
Gladys is one farmer among many, building a more resilient livelihood and helping others believe a different way of farming is possible. Her story, and others like it, are part of what our latest Impact Report set out to capture.
