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    Thika fam­ily farm set­ting pace in mixed small-scale farm­ing

    small holder mixed farming model.JPG

    A fam­ily owned farm in Thika is con­sidered the bench­mark in mixed farm­ing as over 10 to 15 famer groups visit them every week to learn how they are able to op­er­ate sev­eral farm­ing activ­it­ies in a small piece of land.

     The fam­ily of five; Ken­neth Macharia, his wife and three chil­dren cul­tiv­ate in less than half an acre land near Sports Club in Thika, Ki­ambu Coun­try.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Mixed farm­ing im­mune farmer from severe losses

    Ken­neth Macharia who star­ted fish farm­ing, poultry and a dairy unit in his farm in 1999 after re­tir­ing as a tech­ni­cian from the Min­istry of Trans­port, has turned the farm into a prac­tical train­ing centre where other farm­ers and ex­perts come to learn how a small land can host many farm­ing activ­it­ies.

    “I re­ceive vis­it­ors every week and I share my ex­per­i­ences with them as a mixed farmer. Some churches from the area also bring youth to learn some of these prac­tical skills in farm­ing,” said Macharia.

    “In June, I even re­ceived a group of farm­ers and their lead­ers from South Nyanza who had come on a series of ag­ri­cul­tural events and bench mark­ing in Nairobi and my farm was one of their des­tin­a­tions.”

    Macharia has since re­gistered with the Re­gis­trar of So­ci­ety nam­ing it Sky Blue Farm­lands. This en­ables him to earn sup­ply tenders of his ag­ri­cul­tural pro­duce.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Mixed farm­ing earns ag­ri­pren­eur double cash

    Be­sides poultry, fish­ery and dairy farm­ing, Macharia is cur­rently run­ning a yoghurt pro­duc­tion plant within the same piece of land using his own milk to pro­duce High­land Yoghurt. For the last six months, he has dis­trib­uted it to the local shops and some areas in Nairobi such as Kawang­ware and Baba Dogo among oth­ers.

    Al­though the heated polit­ical cli­mate in the coun­try has to some ex­tent af­fected the yoghurt busi­ness, Macahria is not giv­ing up. “I have won a sup­ply tender with Kass­matt Su­per­mar­ket which is good for busi­ness after the cur­rent polit­ical situ­ation af­fected our sup­ply in some areas in Nairobi.”

    A litre of High­land Yoghurt goes for Sh160. The milk, pro­cessing pro­cess and the yoghurt it­self has been cer­ti­fied by Kenya Bur­eau of Stand­ards (KEBS) mean­ing the farm is op­er­at­ing a clean busi­ness.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE:  Father of hy­dro­ponics rakes for­tunes with mixed farm­ing

    He ad­vices young farm­ers to shy away from the fear of trial that many be­gin­ners in ag­ribusi­ness suf­fer from end­ing up with a coun­try with lim­ited ag­ri­pren­uers as com­pared to the pop­u­la­tion feed­ing on ag­ri­cul­tural pro­duce.

    “I wel­come the youth who want to learn and be trained for free. I am also think­ing of start­ing ad­mit­ting col­lege stu­dents who would like to come for at­tach­ments and in­tern­ships in my farm from next year on as many have been re­quet­ing,” said Macharia.

    Com­ments (2)

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    • Kennedy Onyango wrote:
      Kindly  assist with his contact please.
      Hi Kennedy, we, unfortunately, do not have Macharia's number at the moment. We will source it for you and reach back if we do get it.
      0
    • Kindly  assist with his contact please.
      0
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