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    By George Munene


    At NjabinI, Kin­an­gop Samuel Mbugua has built a seven-acre flower farm that rakes in Sh5M per sea­son.


    “Hav­ing spent most of my adult life work­ing in the flower sec­tor; I have been a su­per­visor at flower farms for five years. I mastered all things flowers—from their grow­ing to the mar­ket dy­nam­ics and in 2014 I gathered the cour­age to strike it out on my own,” says Mbugua.


    The 34-year-old ma­jors in the farm­ing of cras­pe­dias with 3 acres of his farm under the sum­mer flower. On an­other four acres, he grows al­li­ums and pur­purea on two acres each. On a smal­ler half an acre he is cur­rently farm­ing sca­bio­sas on a trial basis.


    Whilst the big flower farms major on roses, small­holder flower farm­ers are mak­ing their for­tune in sum­mer flowers used to adorn and blend bou­quets.


    Entry hurdles
    Start­ing out he says, the biggest chal­lenge most farm­ers face is land—“the flower ex­port sec­tor de­mands high qual­ity and quant­it­ies.” You’ll need a min­imum of two acres to qual­ify as a small scale ex­port grower. The other chal­lenge is the cost of seed­lings and the avail­ab­il­ity of unadul­ter­ated seeds. Most seeds are ma­nip­u­lated due to cross­pol­lin­a­tion.

    Re­lated News: Fact sheet on grow­ing cut flowers for ex­port

    Re­lated News: In­creased de­mand for Kenyan flowers in the US ex­cites pro­du­cers and ex­port­ers
    For his first crop, he bought seed­lings from a neigh­bour also en­gaged in the trade. An up­rooted cras­pe­dia can give 20-50 rooted splits. This makes their propaga­tion easier.
    Cul­tiv­a­tion cost
    For an acre, you will need 30,000-40,000 seed­lings, and each seed­ling costs three shil­lings. Ma­chine tilling and plough­ing costs for an acre of vir­gin land av­er­age at Sh15,000. He spends Sh7,000 on hir­ing cas­ual la­bour­ers to pre­pare the flower beds and Sh3,000 on plant­ing. He uses four 50kg bags of or­ganic fer­til­isers at plant­ing and two bags of NPK fer­til­iser at top dress­ing done at five months dur­ing their ve­get­at­ive phase and the crops’ first har­vest. If you have ad­equate ma­nure you do not need to use fetrtil­iser at the plant­ing phase.
    Cras­pe­dia re­quire little water and is cap­able of going to up to a month without wa­ter­ing. Though wa­ter­ing is cru­cial at the plant­ing stage when they are their most vul­ner­able. Given the usu­ally fa­vor­able Kin­an­gop cli­mate, Samuel mostly re­lies on rain­wa­ter, but has sunk a well and has ac­cess to piped water if need be.
    “Pests af­fect­ing flowers are largely lim­ited to cut­worms and aph­ids sprayed on a scout­ing basis with Du­du­thrin and Thun­der re­spect­ively,” Mbugua ex­plains. Weed­ing is done on a monthly basis.


    Har­vest
    Cras­pe­dias take 90 days to ma­ture and are con­tinu­ally har­vestable for up to a year with proper feed­ing. One plant gives about 100 stems every year. “Har­vests are done once every week, but if well-ten­ded to you can have two har­vests in a week,” says Mbugua.

    Re­lated News: Kenya’s flowers, fruits and ve­get­able earn­ings in­crease by 33 per cent in eight months
    An acre can give up to 500,000 flower stems.


    Mar­kets
    Mbugua ex­ports his flowers mainly through Wil­mar Flowers Lim­ited. The prices vary de­pend­ing on sea­son peak­ing over the Janu­ary to Feb­ru­ary win­dow at five to 15 shil­lings per stem and fall­ing to Sh3 per stem dur­ing off-peak months of Au­gust to Septem­ber.
    Mbugua is work­ing to in­crease his acre­age and on get­ting an ex­port li­cense— this he says will en­able him to sell his flowers at no less than Sh5 a stem throughout the year.

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    A Kitui County farmer is en­joy­ing im­proved an­nual yields from graf­ted man­goes in his one acre farm from 500 fruits per tree to 1000 fruits after abandon­ing grow­ing local vari­et­ies of man­goes

    Stephen Musy­oka who used to grow tra­di­tional vari­ety of man­goes is one of the be­ne­fi­ciar­ies of free train­ings on graf­ted man­goes offered in 2016 by Rise Kenya, a non-profit or­gan­iz­a­tion which also built a fruit’s pro­cessing equip­ment in the county to help farm­ers with the ready mar­ket.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Value ad­di­tion im­proves live­li­hoods of mango farm­ers in Kitui

    “I am grow­ing Ngowe vari­ety of man­goes using graft­ing tech­nique and I har­vest more fruits from my 100 tress than I used to two years ago,” said Musy­oka.

    “Moreover, grow­ing man­goes by seeds takes longer to pro­duce fruit and are more dif­fi­cult to man­age than those that have been graf­ted, thus mango tree graft­ing is my pre­ferred method of grow­ing the fruit.”

    This tech­nique has also seen other farm­ers who used to grow other crops such as maize aban­don the ven­ture for graf­ted man­goes due to cli­matic change that has seen the county re­ceive little rain­fall mak­ing such crops un­suit­able for the area.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Farm­ers group help Mak­ueni farm­ers milk cash from man­goes

    “Kitui is one of the arid and semi-arid areas. Farm­ers in these areas are now forced to ad­just and or adopt new farm­ing tech­niques or em­brace crops that are suit­able for such con­di­tions such as man­goes. Graft­ing tech­nique ad­op­ted by Kitui mango farm­ers is a big hope,” said Charles Muthui Kang’ethe, Na­tional Farm­ers In­form­a­tional Ser­vice (NAFIS), Kitui County.

    “Mango tree graft­ing is the most re­li­able and eco­nom­ical method of mango propaga­tion.”

    Musy­oka who is cur­rently har­vest­ing his man­goes sells the fruits to the pro­cessing plant by Rise Kenya via the agents of the fact­ory who come sort and ferry the fruits to the com­pany. He ripens the re­main­ing fruits which are then sold in the nearby busi­ness centres.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Dry­ing man­goes saves farm­ers post-har­vest loses

    The man­goes are packed in 5kg car­tons which carry man­goes sizes between 9 and 10. He is paid in a week time after de­liv­ery de­pend­ing on the weight of the man­goes de­livered.

    Be­fore farm­ers sold all their man­goes in the mar­ket, res­ult­ing in lower prices and wastage with many un­sold man­goes left to rot.

    The train­ings by Rise Kenya has helped farm­ers like Musy­oka re­duce post-har­vest losses which is 40 per cent in Kenya. This is due to poor har­vest­ing and post-har­vest hand­ling meth­ods, want­ing stor­age, trans­port­a­tion and pack­aging.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Middle East mar­ket craves for more Kenyan man­goes

    Ngowe mango vari­ety ac­counts for 17 per cent pro­duc­tion in Kenya and it is pre­ferred by pro­cessors, in ad­di­tion to Tommy Atkins, Van Dyke and Kent. It is also res­ist­ant to an­thracnose dis­ease.

    Mwingi Dis­trict for ex­ample has one of the highest pop­u­la­tion of in­di­gen­ous man­goes in the whole coun­try. However, eight out of every 10 ripe man­goes go to waste while in the hands of farm­ers ac­cord­ing to Jomo Kenyatta Uni­versity of Ag­ri­cul­ture and Tech­no­logy (JKUAT) re­search.

    Dur­ing the mango peak sea­son, a sack of ripe man­goes fetches a paltry Sh1000 there­fore selling to the fact­ory be­comes more prof­it­able.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Kenyan man­goes have a ripe mar­ket in Japan

    Kerio Val­ley De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity sells graf­ted mango seed­lings at Sh120 each and they can be reached on +254 (053) 20633661-2

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    A poultry farmer from Kakamega County has reduced his bird feed expenditure from Sh23,500 a month to just Sh7,050 by substituting commercial feeds with maggots extracted from pig waste.

    Pigs utilise only 60 per cent of the food they eat, with 40 per cent coming out as waste. But Kakamega farmer Bernard Njaramba realised he could use the waste to make bird food. He began collecting it into heaps and exposing it to the open air for at least six hours so as to attract flies to speed up the decomposition process. After this, he leaves the droppings for six days to cure and for the maggots to fully develop. He then harvests the maggots manually and uses them to feed his birds between the age of three months and adulthood.

    Related News: Early planting and farmyard manure control bean stem maggot pest that causes wilting to the crop

    “In our three-acre farm, we used to depend on commercial feeds to feed all our chicken, geese, ducks, guinea fowl and turkey and would spend Sh23,500 per 500 kilos each month. So when we discovered that maggots can be an exclusive alternative source of food for birds, we switched to that mode of feeding.” said Njaramba.“Now we spend Sh7,050 per 150 kilos a month to feed the younger birds from the age of one day to three months since their digestive system is not yet ready to break down maggots.” 

    Since maggots have a short life cycle Nyaramba recommends that the maggots be fed to the birds within 10 days of harvesting before they develop into adults.

    Bernard Nyaramba learnt of the breeding strategy in 2015 through online research when he wanted to find out how to make home-based feed that would improve his overall bird health and weight.

    According to Livestock Research for Rural Development, maggots are a high source of protein that helps in the development of birds. A single meal contains 47.1 per cent protein, 25.3 per cent fat, 7.5 per cent fiber and other nutrients such as calcium, amino acids and vitamins.

    Related News: Bidco introduces poultry feeds that reduce maturity period in kienyeji chicken, increasing yields

    Bearing in mind that protein is a key component in the healthy development of poultry, feeding them with maggots directly compensates for nutrients that would come from silverfish or soya beans, which tend to be expensive for the majority of small scale farmers.

    “In addition, the birds rarely fall sick, they are bigger, look health and always produce larger eggs,” said Nyaramba.

    Currently, Nyaramba has 150 birds across chicken, geese, ducks, guinea fowl and turkey, which he feeds with the maggots, and he also produces maggots to sell to farmers around him at the cost of Sh1800 for a 50kg bag. He sources the pig waste from his pigsty.

    Related News: Reliable market earns Kakamega farmer Sh16,000 a pig in seven months

    He can be reached on 0791331636.

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