In Erba Buliyo Kebele of Ana Sora District, a quiet transformation is unfolding led by a 50-year-old widow, mother, and farmer, Tadelech Adula. Once dependent on a small plot that barely sustained her family, Tadelech is now recognized as a model farmer championing Regenerative Agriculture(RA) and peer learning within her community.

Through the SAA (Sasakawa Africa Association) and FOLU (Food and Land Use Coalition) partnership initiative, which promotes regenerative agriculture at landscape level, Tadelech received practical training on soil health management, crop diversification, composting, and integrated farming. What she learned did not stay with her alone. As part of the Farmers’ Learning Production Cluster (FLPC), she actively shares new practices with fellow farmers, encouraging collective adoption of sustainable methods across the kebele.As both a farmer and a member of a women-led group engaged in livestock, meat, and wool marketing, Tadelech has strengthened her technical and decision-making skills. Her homestead now functions as a practical demonstration site for farmers in the area. Through vermiculture, she produces high-quality vermicompost that improves soil fertility, enhances yields, and reduces her reliance on external inputs—while buffering against climate, pest, and disease pressures. Using permaculture principles, she also grows a steady supply of vegetables that support household nutrition and generate additional income.

Today, Tadelech manages a circular farming system that integrates livestock, vegetable production, and vermiculture. During the 2023/24 production season, she applied 400 kg of vermicompost to maize and 400 kg more to faba bean, improving both productivity and soil structure. Her vermiculture enterprise has grown into a a profitable livelihood activity: she earned USD 1,117 from selling 85 kg of worms and 500 kg of vermicompost, generating reliable supplementary income for her household.

“The training and advice I received from SAA helped me understand how to farm in a more integrated and sustainable way,” she says. “I am now able to support my family and share what I have learned with others.”

Tadelech’s achievements reflect the broader goals of  SAA-FOLU  joint project designed to promote regenerative agriculture at landscape-level embracing homesteads, outfields, and other communal land uses. Such interventions are helping to put the Farmers Production Cluster (FPC) farming on more sustainable path. FPC pushes accelerated scaling of conventional inputs/ practices on a selected commodity, invisibly promoting mono-cropping. Under the SAA–FOLU initiative, the existing cluster model, now known as FLPC, as it promotes learning on the community of RA practices such as reduced tillage, composting, biofertilizer use, and the spatial and temporal diversification through the inclusion of climate-resilient crops like wheat, barley, haricot bean, and faba bean in rotation and intercropping systems. Across three Kebeles in Ana Sora and Negele Arsi districts, the FLPC model is expanding. From modest beginnings, it now covers 209 hectares, bringing together 302 farmers who are adopting RA practices such as reduced tillage, composting, biofertilizer use, and crop rotation with climate-resilient cereals and legumes. This growing momentum highlights the strength of SAA’s partnership approach, placing farmers at the center of learning and supporting communities transition toward more productive and sustainable farming systems.

Tadelech’s story is a powerful example of how targeted training, farmer-to-farmer learning, and regenerative practices can lead to lasting change. Her success reflects the triple outcomes SAA strives for: improved nutrition, increased incomes, and environmental sustainability, demonstrating what is possible when innovation and community leadership come together.

Year-1 SAA-FOLU FLPC promoted wheat-haricot bean rotation cluster farm

Year-2 Aerial view of SAA-FOLU promoted FLPC wheat-haricot bean rotation cluster farm-1