Supporting Agventure to build a more resilient smallholder cereal network in Kenya
Agventure is a farmer-owned company supporting small and medium-scale farmers across Kenya to adopt sustainable practices in non-irrigated cereal-based systems, including conservation agriculture and crop diversification. The company sources canola, wheat, barley and pulses from eight shareholder farms and hundreds of emergent farmers. Agventure runs a hot-press canola oil facility in Nakuru, providing jobs for local community members. Through its Centre of Excellence (CoE), Agventure delivers agronomic training to farmers, helping them incorporate crop rotation into their farming strategies and build technical knowledge across the value chain.
AgDevCo has invested debt to finance a new pulses and seed cleaning facility for Agventure, and since 2024 has complemented that investment through its Technical Assistance (TA) Facility — working directly with the Agventure team to expand and improve farmer training through their CoE, digitalise field operations, and build the ESG capacity needed to sustain the company's growth.
Tony Bor, Centre lead at the CoE, describes how TA support has meaningfully impacted Agventure’s outgrowers:
“The AgDevCo Technical Assistance Facility has been transformational. We trained 2,280 farmers across eight Kenyan regions in conservation agriculture, growing the total outgrower canola supply by 47% to 5,564 MT in 2025. The average income for outgrowers who supplied canola grains in 2025 reached KES 2.46M. This is a very good income in the rural areas.”
TA support has driven positive outcomes for Agventure's outgrowers, including through training delivered directly to farmers via the CoE, and through training delivered to the field officers who support them. Training has helped shift a farmer base long reliant on monocropping and conventional tillage towards conservation agriculture and canola-based crop rotation. These practices build soil health and improve moisture retention over time. Outgrowers who adopted these practices and supplied canola to the business saw stronger yields and incomes. Notably, outgrower volumes exceeded those from Agventure's shareholder farms for the first time in 2025.
Field officers were trained directly by a lead consultant agronomist, sharpening their skills in canola and sunflower husbandry and their ability to interpret soil analysis reports. Wider evidence shows that stronger extension-agent capacity translates into better farmer outcomes, since agents act as the transmission point between technical knowledge and what happens on the ground1.
The development of the CoE’s outgrower app has improved the collection and processing of farmer data. Field teams now receive real-time reports, giving them a clearer view of what's happening on the ground and improving decision-making as a result. This kind of data-driven extension allows support to be more timely and targeted to individual outgrowers, contributing to gains in farmer productivity and income over time.
“This partnership sharpened our team, digitised our operations, and built climate resilience where it matters most.” ~ Tony Bor, Centre Lead, Centre of Excellence
Download the Agventure and AgDevCo Technical Assistance Facility Project Spotlight [here].
1. Buehren, Goldstein, Molina & Vaillant (2017), The Impact of Strengthening Agricultural Extension Services: Evidence from Ethiopia, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8169.