For six years, Red Feather Development Group has been pushing a low-cost solution to the housing crunch on Indian reservations, where extended families often squeeze into tiny government-issue homes.

David and Carrie Chew live in a house made of straw. It has two bathrooms, a modern kitchen and a packed earthen floor. The exterior walls are made with stacked wheat straw bales covered in plaster.

The interest in straw-bale construction for houses, originally a 19th century technique, began redeveloping in the late 1980s as one of a number of "natural" building techniques, as Marcia Schnedler ...

Kenyans are increasingly embracing straw bale technology, which uses materials made entirely out of farm waste, to build cheaper and environmentally-friendly dream homes, writes KEVIN OGUOKO Jackline ...