(Thanks to SH for this one)
Organic Farm Blossoms in Kenya's Largest Slum
by Xan Rice in Nairobi

Victor Matioli's organic pumpkins are plump, his coriander aromatic and his spinach "very soft, sweet, and tasty". His half-acre farm is a former rubbish dump in the heart of east Africa's biggest slum. So arresting is the sight of tall sunflowers growing amid the rust-coloured shacks and dirt paths of Kibera that Matioli and his fellow growers have had to put up a "No photographing" sign to allow them to work in peace. Their reputations - the farmers are all reformed criminals - mean the warning is seldom ignored.

The unlikely story of Kibera's first "organic" farm - its only farm of any scale - has its roots in the chaos that gripped Kenya at the start of the year. For weeks the sprawling, densely packed slum, home to up to a million people, was gripped by ethnic clashes and street battles between riot police and protesters demonstrating over flawed presidential elections.

Among those concerned about a looming hunger crisis was Su Kahumbu, managing director of Green Dreams, one of Kenya's pioneer organic produce companies.

Initially, she hoped to organise a mass distribution of seeds to small-scale farmers in the Rift Valley to enable them to plant before the April rains. After a lack of funding halted the plan, a friend told her about a group of young, unemployed men in Kibera who wanted to learn how to farm - inside the slum.

Link to con.