Global leaders and organisations at the ongoing 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) have emphasized the urgent need for resilient food systems to combat climate change and ensure food security.

While the discussions may seem groundbreaking, some communities back home are already putting these concepts into practice.

In Bomet county, Kenya, for example, a small but impactful initiative at Kugerwet Primary School is transforming local attitudes toward agriculture. Amid a region dominated by tea farming, a thriving vegetable garden stands as a testament to resilience and sustainability.

Dominic Orina, a 34-year-old teacher at the school, has spearheaded the project to encourage vegetable farming, improve nutrition, and challenge gendered farming norms. In this region, tea farming dominates as the community prioritizes its higher economic value, often overlooking vegetables and other low-emission crops.

“I introduced this initiative after I was delocalised to this area by my employer Teacher Service Commission. When I came here I realised that fruit and vegetable consumption was very low because people were not growing them.

“The few who grew some vegetables were for their domestic use and not for sale. The other reason I found was that people lacked knowledge and skills on how to grow them and apart from that other people didn’t know the health importance of these vegetables and fruits to their bodies,” says Dominic.

According to him, though women have always wanted to grow some of these crops it has not been possible because tea is grown in almost 90 per cent of their lands.

This makes it hard for them to get a place to grow other crops. With most of the land in this area owned by men, they hold the final say on what crops are grown and what not.

This scenario reflects findings from a recent CGIAR report, which highlights that men predominantly engage in cash crop farming.

According to the report dubbed Where Women in Agri-food Systems are at Highest Climate Risk: a methodology for mapping climate–agriculture–gender inequality hotspots men tend to focus more on cash crops like tea and coffee which are viewed as economically valuable.