Murang'a farmer's fortunes change with custard apples

For 22 years, Fredrick Kinyanjui, 57, worked as a truck driver, a job that enabled him to support his family sufficiently.

As a long-distance trucker, Kinyanjui, who is from Kamahuha village, Maragua subcounty, Murang'a county, would ferry coffee from Uganda among other things and saw it make huge sums of money for his employers.

Having been brought up in a farm, Kinyanjui was inspired to venture into coffee farming to supplement his income in 2003.

With 333 coffee bushes producing about 500,000kg, he was getting good returns as the crop was attracting good prices.

He farmed coffee until 2010, when the coffee sector dipped and farmers started missing payments due to debts that had accumulated.

When his payment started getting deductions to pay the debts incurred by factories and coffee co-operative societies, it dampened his zeal and he went back home and cut down all his coffee bushes.

Instead, he decided to try farming custard apples that his father had farmed for decades, and it seemed to give him a good income.

“I remembered my father would tell me it was custard apples that paid for my education,” he said.

His father had a few indigenous custard apple trees, and buyers would stream into his farm, ensuring a ready market.

With this motivation, Kinyanjui decided to try the grafted variety that he was assured produced bigger fruits.

Because of land limitations, Kinyanjui could only plant 40 trees that he then tended to for three years before they started producing fruits.

The trees take up to five years to produce fruits that can be commercialised with good crop husbandry.

The fruit, he said, fetched a much higher price per kilogramme than coffee, yet required less attention.

Each tree has a maximum production of 800kg per season, with the harvesting season starting from May to September.

On average, Kinyanjui harvests between 10 and 20 tonnes of custard apples per season, with a kilogramme going for about Sh60.

“This year, we are expecting the price to go up to Sh80 per kilogramme, though the production is lower because of the drought we experienced last year.”

His fruits are purely organic, which makes it easy to sell them both locally and internationally.

At one point, Kinyanjui proudly explained that he harvested fruits weighing over two kilogrammes each due to the husbandry practices he employs.

He mostly sells his fruits at the farm gate but was lucky to get an exporting company that sold his fruits to the Middle East last year.

“The company visited my farm and took fruit samples that it took abroad, and the buyers said mine tasted even better than the fruits they were getting from Mexico.”

Kinyanjui said another buyer from Saudi Arabia wants at least one tonne of fruits per week until the end of the season.

This prompted him to rally some of his neighbors and relatives to plant the fruit trees to help in consolidating the produce for the export market.

As such, Kinyanjui has turned his farm into a demonstration farm to train farmers hoping to embark on custard apple farming.

He charges Sh1,000 per farmer for the training, which he said provides him with an extra income with farmers streaming into his farm from all parts of the country.

He sources for indigenous seeds from as far as Loitoktok and uses them to graft the seedlings that he then sells at Sh300 each.

“The seeds of the grafted variety have a germination rate of below 10 per cent, so we use the indigenous seeds and graft them to improve their production.”

Recently, the farmer got an order to supply 1,000 seedlings to a group of farmers in Loitoktok who want to start custard apple farming.

The custard apple tree only requires sufficient water and manure, but requires patience as the harvests increase with time.

The biggest challenge facing the fruit is climate change, which limits the moisture the trees get, reducing their production.

Fruit flies and false codling moths are also attracted to the fruit due to its sugary taste but can be managed using traps.

“An organic trap costs about Sh300 and lasts about three months, which covers a season. One trap covers about 100 metres.”

The fruit is not prone to many diseases but is susceptible to cold weather, which causes fruits to fall off before they mature.

The farmer explained that the fruit does better in coffee zones and is said to suppress chronic illnesses, such as cancer and diabetes, and regulates blood pressure and blood sugar.

Kinyanjui also grows plantain bananas, keeps dairy cattle and has mangoes and avocados in his farm.

“Farming has good money. I would not leave it for anything else. I am content with the returns I am getting from it,” he said.