The Archaea Soil Lab
Services
This is a 2-3 months program delivered in weekly hour long zoom sessions. There are 8 sessions in total. Courses start on the beginning of each month. After completing the course and taking the exam, you may earn yourself an iCow Soil Advocate Certificate and exemplary students will be featured on this site.
To join email info@icow.co.ke subject line JOIN SOIL ADVOCACY Course by clicking below.
Soil Lab Services
We offer the following:
- Hands on microscopy training to become Certified Soil Lab Technicians
- Back end Soil, Compost and Vermiculture analytics
- Instant SMS analyses to farmers
- Business training
- Mentorship
- Branding
- Networking
To work with us contact us on info@archaeakenya.org
How we impact at Scale
Emmanuel Kirwa
Do you know what a Sitatunga is? Emmanuel Kirwa iCow Boda Soil Advocate in Nandi County Kenya shares his inspirational decade long journey transforming his community from poverty to wealth through joint collaborative efforts including tree planting, tea growing, bee and fish farming. The environmental transformation resulted in the return of the rare sitatunga. Seeing is believing.
Class of 2021
Class of 2021
The iCow Soil Advocacy Program started in June 2021 with an aim of training hundreds of individuals to become Soil Advocates, trained on Soil Biology and Regenerative Agriculture, in rural areas.
The course is delivered over zoom in weekly one hour sessions over a period of 2-3 months. The course content covers Climate Change, CO2 cycles, The Soil Food Web, Regenerative Agriculture including zero or minimum tillage, Composting, Cover planting/cropping, Soil structure and Integrity and Advocacy.
The first class of students to join the iCow Soil Advocates class were Boda Boda (motorcycle taxi) riders from the greater iCow Community in Kenya. Subsequent classes have included farmers and a class designed and focused on women in agriculture. Each student must share their knowledge and practical sessions with a female individual in their family or community, their +One.
Soil Integrity Tests
Early on in the iCow Soil Advocacy program, we teach farmers how their actions on their soils affect the soil integrity and structure. We do this through a very simple experiment we have learned from the Kiss The Ground Soil program. This simple experiment is crucial in helping us quickly see the difference between soil with good integrity and soil that has lost integrity and structure.
This video is a compilation of student testing and demonstrating the soil integrity test.
Composting and Advocacy
As iCow Soil Advocates, students learn the importance of compost in inoculating microbial life into soils. They learn how to make compost using on farm material and are expected to teach family and community members to do the same.
Compost piles are then registered through mobile phone by Soil Advocates or farmers onto the iCow platform Compost Calendar. Once registered, they begin to receive timely SMS messages on actions they need to take throughout the composting period e.g watering , turning, checking temperature etc
This video shows a compilation of students making compost and sharing their knowledge with family and community members.