Over 100 Kenyan tobacco farmers took part in a government-backed project to plant sustainable crops instead of tobacco plants. Their first harvest already yielded 135 tonnes of high-iron beans, reports Deutsche Welle.

About 100 Kenyan farmers participated in a pilot project to help them switch from tobacco cultivation to growing alternative food crops. The World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Food Program (WFP) and the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) funded the project and helped to retrain the farmers.
"The project in Migori for the tobacco farmers is a major shift towards attaining a healthy nation, and the Ministry of Health fully supports such ventures," Kenya's Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe was quoted as saying.
Tobacco crop cultivation contributed less than 1 per cent to Kenya's economic development, the report said. Kenya had ratified the legally binding WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2004, and was the first country in the world to implement a pilot project on alternative tobacco cultivation.