In Kenya, Maasai women independently manage and maintain grass seed banks, using small parts of communal land to produce grasses and grass seeds. The grass seed banks are beneficial for the degraded and neglected areas because the vegetation is brought back. Besides these environmental benefits, grass seed banks also have economic benefits for Maasai women.
Grass seed banks are used to produce grasses and grass seeds. Small parts of communal land are naturally fenced with shrubbery, protecting the grasses from grazing livestock and wildlife. Because of the Maasai women, the grass seed banks form an oasis of green in the mostly dry and barren surroundings. In our project areas in Kuku and OOGR in Kenya, the sales of the grass seed banks turned into landscape restoration enterprises by selling the harvested grass seeds on the local market. With these enterprises, economic opportunities are increasing for local communities while degraded land restoring simultaneously.
Bringing back vegetation by maintaining grass seed banks and empowering women by selling the seeds
Environmental benefits
The maintenance of the grass seed banks is helping to improve the state of indigenous rangeland grasses that are often neglected and underdeveloped. The grass seed banks enable the area to bloom again. The grasses in the grass seed banks attract insects and small animals. Their return stimulates the recovery of the ecosystem and supports vegetation in the surroundings to start to grow as well. Once the grasses are fully grown, the seeds are sold on local markets. Sometimes, we also use these seeds in newly dug bunds, e.g. within our water bund projects, adding to the regreening of other project areas.
Empowering Maasai women
Selling the grasses and the grass seeds harvested from the grass seed banks generate a source of income for the Maasai women who are managing the grass seed banks. This income serves as an alternative livelihood, enabling the women to become more financially empowered and independent: it can e.g. support the women to pay for school fees and health care.
Another significant benefit for the Maasai women groups is the production of honey. With the money grossed from the grass seeds, the women of the Enkii group bought three beehives and placed them in the middle of the grass seed bank. The women are trained to maintain these beehives and how they can harvest the honey. Selling the honey creates an extra source of income!
Protect the project areas
With the broad range of nosy elephants in the surroundings of the grass seed banks, damages to the fences can occur. That is why Save the Elephants came up with an innovative solution: using beehives in the fencing of the grass seed banks! Elephants are terrified of bees. When they try to enter the grass seed banks, the bees in the hives will wake up and scare the elephants away - how innovative!
Want to read more about grass seed banks and our other regreening techniques? Check out our website!
