Mike Njau, a college-educated food nutritionist left his banking job to farm strawberries in small-scale. It is nearly one and a half years now since he started the faming venture with an initial capital of Sh5,000 and 200 strawberries seedlings.
Today, the value of his farming venture has grown to Sh480,000 according to Limurudistrict hrticulture officer Mary Kinuthia. By March 2014, Njau expects to be growing 5,000 stems of strawberry from the current 1,400. He is optimistic that by this time, his income from the farm will be double the salary he earned from his last employment at the local bank.
“My plan is to earn double the salary of Sh 20,000 I last earned when I was employed. I will then start expanding the business,” said the 25-year-old young farmer from Sigona Ward, Kiambu County.
More young people are now realising the value of farming especially for produce that have ready market or can be value added to fetch higher income. It is a generational change of farming in a country where the average age of a small scale farmer is above 55 years according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“My choice of growing strawberries was deliberate because they have a high demand, they are nutritious, preferred by people who like healthy living and they fetch higher prices. We are not able to meet demand for strawberries especially for bigger outlets,” said Njau. He says recently a local retail store requested if he could deliver one tone of strawberries every week.
He will need to expand his venture to meet such an order because he does not expect to get back to white collar employment. Njau and several other smallscale farmers are currently selling their strawberries directly to customers as they cannot meet the high demand of supply from the consumer stores.
They depend on a marketing network developed by Farm Concern International (FCI), the organisation working to improve the commercial value of smallscale farming across the eastern Africa region supported by Rockefeller Foundation.
He is part of youth farmers’ network known as Youth in Agricultural Trade and Enterprises (YATE), which is supported by the FCI’s smallscale farming commercialisation initiative. They are ten members known a Generation Achievers in the bracket 18 to 25.
Each member is involved in a commercial model smallscale farming ranging from strawberry farming, rearing poultry, summer flowers growing and rabbits and livestock keeping.
(Source: http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2013/12/18/from-banker-to-strawberry-farmer_c870206 )
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