Kenyan professionals take up farming

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Agro Farming
Agro Farming

It is not enough to get a nice job in the city, sit in the office and work day in day out, a good number of Kenyan young professional are realizing. Agro Farming
Office work alone, according to them, makes one dull, unambitious and financially constrained to live a good life, therefore, one must have a “side hustle”.
A side hustle in the Kenyan street parlance means an activity or a job that one engages in besides his work to make extra money.
Of the many “side hustles” the Kenyan young professionals, mainly men, are engaging in, farming is turning out to be a top choice.
Lawyers, accountants, journalists, bankers, doctors, lecturers, fashion designers and information technologists all are venturing into farming as they realize how lucrative agribusiness is.
While some are keeping livestock like chickens and rabbits, majority are leasing land outside Nairobi and growing fast- maturing horticultural crops that include tomatoes, capsicum and cabbages and traditional vegetables whose market is insatiable in the capital.
Vincent Mulando, Patrick Shimenga and Paul Onyango are some of the young Kenyan professionals who have gone into farming.
Vincent Mulando, a young lawyer, runs a firm in Nairobi that is fast-growing with his clients including top commercial banks in the East African nation. Shimenga, on the other hand, is a senior information technologist with an insurance company in Nairobi while Onyango works with a leading commercial bank.
The three friends came together and leased a five-acre piece of land in Juja on the outskirts of Nairobi, where they are currently growing tomatoes, capsicum, sukuma wiki, cabbages and traditional vegetables.
It has been over five months since they started the venture that has given them at least two harvests.
“This is what I now want to focus my energies on even as I work hard to build my career in banking,” said Onyango, who visits the farm every weekend.
“There is good money in farming and it is worth the investment. The population is growing fast and so is the demand for food. You cannot go wrong with farming as long as you do things right,” he added.
The three leased the farm at 53 U.S. dollars per acre, fenced it and bought a water pump, which they use to draw water from a nearby river for irrigation.
“We are yet to recoup our investment of about 3,157 dollars but what we have gotten from the harvest is promising that we would get our money back by the fifth harvest,” said Mulando, adding that they supply their produce to a supermarket in Nairobi and have employed two workers on the farm.
Away from Juja, university lecturer Beatrice Mundia keeps chickens and grows crops on her two-acre farm in Kisaju on the outskirts of Nairobi, where she also lives.
Mundia keeps 400 layers and grows tomatoes and capsicum that she supplies to traders at a local market where demand is high.
“It is good to have another source of income on the side so that in case things do not go as they should at your main place of work, you have a fallback plan,” said Mundia, who earns at least 421 dollars a month from the venture.
Bernard Moina, an agricultural extension officer based in western Kenya, noted that it is good news for the country that professionals are embracing farming.
“People are realizing that a white collar job is not all that one needs in life to progress and be happy. Farming is a good industry to invest, in particularly, in Nairobi where demand for produce is too high making people make almost free money,” he said.
Moina added that the fact that the professionals have the knowledge, the money to invest, and the passion is good enough to turn farming into a specialized venture. Enditem

-Xinhua

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