David Naphtali Otieno

On Episode 64 of The AfriCAN Do! Podcast, we sit down with David Naphtali Otieno, Founder and Director of Green or Dream Investments Ltd, to make the case that the answer is in the soil.

David is building Green or Dream around a conviction that agriculture is not Africa's past but its most underrated future. Through expert agricultural consultancy, the company helps farmers and agribusinesses transform productivity through innovative, sustainable practices, serving everyone from smallholder farms to large scale commercial operations. The vision is unapologetically big: leading agricultural transformation through sustainable practices to ensure global food security for future generations.

His authority on the subject is anything but theoretical. Through Green or Dream, David now consults for AusQuest Farm on the semi-arid Athi plains of Machakos, a farm that has turned land many had written off as barren wasteland into a year-round producer of wheat, chickpeas, green grams and high protein forage, without irrigation and without ever tilling the soil. The system is built on conservation agriculture: no till planting, crop rotation, and banking rainfall in the soil to build a moisture reserve the crops draw on long after the rains have gone. The same farm supplies dairy and beef farmers with fodder 365 days a year, cutting feed costs and lifting milk yields, and shares its know how openly, having hosted thousands of farmers, students, researchers and policy makers who come to see dryland farming done right. It is exactly this kind of transformation, sustainable, profitable and replicable, that David is set on taking to farmers and agribusinesses across the continent.

From the notes for episode 64.