Mary Atemo greeted us with hugs and a warm smile on her farm in Kisumu West County, Kenya, roughly 120 kilometers from the Ugandan border. She has been working with researchers from icipe for 16 years. They introduced her to push-pull farming, a simple but powerful intercropping strategy that increases crop diversity, showing the positive changes to farming that can occur when including farmers with disabilities in innovations. Some plants push pests away from crops, while others pull them in, helping farmers reduce crop losses and rely less on pesticides and other agrichemicals.

Mary told us that in 2010, the Striga weed was decimating her maize crop. Striga, also called witchweed in parts of Kenya, is a parasitic plant and one of the biggest threats to maize and sorghum production in sub-Saharan Africa. According to icipe, it infests about 40 percent of the region’s arable land and causes an estimated US$7 to US$13 billion in crop losses each year. Around the Lake Victoria basin, where Mary farms, Striga can reduce maize yields by 30 to 100 percent.

And Striga wasn’t the only problem. Stem borers, insect larvae that tunnel through the stems of cereal crops, were also destroying her harvest.

When researchers from icipe first visited, Mary agreed to set aside a small experimental plot on farm. “I wanted to prove if the technology was effective or not,” she told us.

It didn’t take long.

“The stem borers ran away after a few days,” she said with a laugh.

As we sat in the shade outside her house, Mary told us she is differently abled and relies on a crutch to move around her farm. But she also made something else very clear.

She is fully capable, demonstrating the importance of including farmers with disabilities in food systems advocacy work.

Walking through the farm with her we listening as she pointed out the Napier grass that repels stem borers and the Desmodium that suppresses Striga while enriching the soil with nitrogen. As she spoke, it became obvious that what makes Mary successful isn’t physical strength—although she has plenty of that, further showing the need to include farmers with disabilities. It’s years of observation, experimentation, and an openness to trying something new.

Read the full article about supporting farmers with disabilities by Danielle Nierenberg at Food Tank.