A partnership between academics and a beer company, which sent sorghum prices soaring in East Africa, has been highlighted as a way of harnessing agricultural research to fight the effects of drought such as the one in the Horn of Africa. The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) linked up with...African Breweries Limited (EABL) in 2009 to address a missing link between research results and farmers' incomes. Farmers had been planting maize, which is susceptible to drought, while local breweries lacked the sorghum needed for beer production. KARI started producing drought-resistant sorghum seeds for distribution to farmers and the price of sorghum shot up threefold, owing to increased demand from EABL and other breweries.