From banker to farmer

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.