Texting Program Helps African Farmers Fight DroughtIn late 2009, Kenyan farmer Jane Gathoni received a short text message that made her day. The African micro-insurance provider, UAP, sent Gathoni a U.S. $29 payment for loss of her harvest due to drought that year. (See flood, drought, and climate change pictures.) Gathoni is one of the more than 9,500 Kenyan farmers who have "micro-insured" themselves under a new program that assesses crop loss—a
