Felister Mbute Nzuve was only five years old when her father passed away. Her mother, barely managing with a tiny pension and the limited harvest from the family’s small farm in the Makueni Hills of eastern Kenya, recognized her only daughter’s potential. “We were very poor, and hunger was a well-known phenomenon in our family,” says Nzuve. “The rains are unreliable in our area, and we did not use appropriate agricultural practices.”