As the rainy season in Kenya draws to a close, our farmers are starting to get ready to harvest their maize. In Chwele District, the difference between the maize of One Acre Fund farmers and non-One Acre Fund farmers is stark. At the beginning of June, one of Chwele’s farmers, Violet Laisa, stood on the edge of her maize field holding a baby in her arms. Her dark green maize stalks soared over her head, and they were covered with sizeable cobs.

Violet planted Pannar seed and plans to harvest at the end of June. Pannar is a fast-growing variety of maize, and it has performed well for our farmers this year. One Acre Fund provides professionally grown hybrid seed, and we allow our farmers to choose between several different varieties. Hybrid seed is naturally grown and selected for higher yields and drought resistance—it is not genetically modified.

Violet liked Pannar so much that she has a cloth with the Pannar logo that she likes to tie over her skirt. When farmers use improved seed for the first time, they are often amazed at how well it performs—and they become loyal customers.

Violet said she hoped to harvest ten bags of maize on ½ acre of land, double what she harvested last year. One Acre Fund farmers generally double to triple their yields in one growing season. This increase means that Violet will have enough maize to feed her family this year—last year, she didn’t.

Violet raises five children, but only two of them are hers—Ian, who is nine months old, and Regan, who is three. The other children belonged to her husband’s first wife, but after she passed away, Violet adopted them.

Though she is raising five children and managing her fields, Violet also holds a leadership position in her group. In fact, she had already finished repaying her loan—a full three months before the repayment deadline.

In the next growing season, which begins in August, Violet plans to plant beans. Early repayment of her maize loan means that she is eligible to receive beans and fertilizer from One Acre Fund. Like many farmers in Chwele District, Violet saw that One Acre Fund farmers had good bean harvests last year. Beans are a good crop for home consumption, and they fetch a good price at the market. Next year, Violet wants to plant 1 acre of maize with One Acre Fund, and a good bean harvest will help her earn enough income to repay a larger loan.

Water leaks into the house, spilling down the wall and flowing onto the floor, adding to the small stream that cuts through the bedroom and sitting room in this small mud hut. Mary Martin, the hut’s owner, is surprisingly upbeat. “I’m not happy about the hole in the wall, but at least I can afford to fix it,” she says.

Mary, 37, who lives in Kenya’s Nyanza province, is not new to hardship. Her parents died years ago and her only two siblings both passed away within the past three years. In 2003 her husband died of AIDS, leaving Mary to raise their three children on her own. With little formal education and no assets other than the land on which they live plus a few animals, there was only one way for Mary to provide for her family: farming.

With declining harvests over the last five years, however, even the family’s most basic needs were hard to meet; her children ate less each day, medical and school bills were constant concerns and repairs or improvements to the house were simply not affordable. Last year was particularly bad – Mary only harvested one sack of maize.

The small harvest, though, was certainly not a result of indifference; Mary wakes up each morning at five, prepares her children for school, heads to the field at six, returns a few hours later to prepare lunch for her three children and then continues her work in the field until they return from school.

Desperate to grow more, Mary was excited when she first heard about One Acre Fund. Her excitement grew when she attended a One Acre Fund community meeting last summer. “I wanted to join right away to grow more – to have more food for my family.”

Although this season’s harvest is still a month away, Mary face brightens when she talks about her maize. “All my neighbors are very jealous,” she says. It’s difficult to predict the size of her harvest, but both Mary and the One Acre Fund staff member for her area expect her field to produce at least three to four times more maize than last season. Mary knows things are not perfect – she has to repair the hole in her wall and recently took one of her children to the hospital for malaria – but her improved harvests give her hope. When asked if she will work with One Acre Fund next season, her response is pragmatic and direct: “I have to – my family needs to eat.”