The cold, hard reality of thriving in agribusiness

With the many layoffs seen in 2019, the government has been encouraging the unemployed, especially the youth, to join the agricultural industry due to diverse job opportunities.

But agricultural expert Caleb Karuga warns that agribusiness is not a walk in the park. It takes a lot of determination and patience to succeed, he says.

Speaking to the Star in an interview, the former K24 journalist said the environment is still not yet conducive and friendly enough.

“I feel the pain of anyone getting into agriculture, the uncertainties are there. The perception that agriculture is high-risk and low-return is why it focuses on one aspect, maize, because that is where cartels are going to benefit from,” he says.

“If you have no patience, I would not advise you to join farming. Do not get into farming if it is not your passion. Do your extensive research before joining this industry.”

There are many loopholes in the industry that could create jobs for the thousands of unemployed youths, he says.

“We don’t have a production problem, we know how to produce. What we have is a logistics problem. It could be how to transport, how to package, how to prolong the shelf life, how to do value addition. Look at opportunities in the value chain instead of the numbers,” Karuga says.

“If you are doing graphics, I would advise you not to become a farmer like me but to get 20 of us as your clients and brand us. Get us business cards, printed T-shirts. For instance, if I am selling yoghurt, you come to me with great branding ideas. For logistics, find a car with a refrigerated truck and transport your fish from there.

“If you came to Kiambu county aggregating all poultry farmers and created a database for all farmers, you can sell that data to an insurance company. For young agronomists, you can de-risk them by offering extension services to them every two weeks or ensuring they have good, quality feeds and come from one central store.

“Home deliveries are now becoming the norm. The usual brick-and-mortar that people are used to is going to decrease. But I am not trying to make it sound easy, it is not easy.”

Karuga, who was a Blaze mentor last year, says a big mistake he sees with young people is that they do not have a teachable spirit and are not inquisitive.

He says the graduates he has interacted with are not willing to do ‘dirty’ work like tilling the shamba or touching manure.

“Just because you have papers does not mean the world owes you a job, and that's the painful truth. I see self-entitlement not only with the young but even the old, especially on the requests I get on social media,” he says.

“The youth should have a teachable spirit. I personally learn every day.”

FARMING AS A CALLING

Karuga, who owns Wendy farms in Kikuyu, says choosing agriculture was second nature to him. Wendy farms specialises in poultry and horticultural farming.

He was raised singlehandedly by his grandparents in Mukurweni, Nyeri county, for a better part of his life, where he fell in love with farming.

“I was fascinated by the multiplication aspect of farming. I loved the art of sowing a seed and getting one maize stock with two or three maize combs. And from these stocks, I could get 200 or 300 seeds. The green life. That’s beautiful,” Karuga says.

The agronomist would, however, move to Nairobi in 2002 to become a hustler like most youths.

“Everyone was moving to the city because that is where we were told we would get money. I started off by printing T-shirts and cards but would later teach myself photography and video editing. I do not have any academic certificate, I'm a good observer, everything is self-taught.”

In 2006, Karuga made his first breakthrough after a member of his church contracted him to video shoot the Miss Kenya pageant.

He would later see job adverts on the newly launched K24 TV station in 2007.

“I took samples of my video shoots when I applied for the job and when asked for my academic certificates, I told them all I could offer were my skills,” he says.

He got the job.

However, he later questioned whether his purpose was journalism.

“I realised journalism wasn't working for me back in late 2011. I knew there's got to be more in store for me. It felt nice winning awards and being recognised by the public and the likes of Maina Kageni and Jeff Koinange after doing a good story, but I still felt this was not for me,” he says.

In 2013, he got tired of employment and presented his case to human resources, but was instead given a raise twice.

“It was not the salary I wanted but better terms. I just didn’t have the courage to resign,” he said.

His prayers would, however, get answered one morning after 72 of them were retrenched. This for him was a blessing as it gave him a chance to fully concentrate on farming.

TRIAL AND ERROR

While he was still a journalist at Mediamax, Karuga leased land in Kikuyu in 2010 and started off with one cock, two hens and three pigs. The number would increase, prompting him to employ casual workers.

“When I got to the shamba after work, I would find a number of my chicken missing. The workers would always tell me they had died. I would later realise they were selling them without my knowledge,” the agricultural expert says.

Some of his pigs would later on die, while he had to get rid of the rest at a loss.

He would also get into strawberry farming after watching on TV how a woman would mint thousands from an acre of land. Like most Kenyans, without further interrogation, Karuga decided to try his luck.

The business died.

“In retrospect, when that woman said she was making Sh150,000, she never mentioned that her core business was training and selling the seedlings, not the fruit. She probably did that because she does not want people to get into that line of business,” he says.

“Anytime someone is hyping anything to do with farming, ask yourself in the value chain, where are they? This lady was a breeder of strawberries and that is how she was making that kind of money.”

The farmer says him not paying attention to his business was the key reason most of his ventures failed.

“At that time I didn't pay much attention to my shamba because I was still working at Mediamax so I had hired some labourers. But these people never told me what was happening. But after being laid off, I became more serious and that is how my real journey began,” he says.

“In 2013, rabbit and quail farming were being hyped. After getting my big paycheck, I became pound foolish and bought 1,300 quails, thinking I would be raking millions in the bank. I bought an incubator at Sh220,000. I bought 2,300 chicken and three cows.

“I also did rabbit farming because the media was telling us rabbit chewing has more market than the meat itself.”

Quail farming would later collapse, with most farmers making huge losses.

Karuga struggled to feed his cows as the shamba was too small to plant fodder. They would later die after eating poisonous weeds.

“I did everything blindly yet I was always doing research on Google. What I would find were big numbers. Most journalists don't interrogate those numbers. I am now wiser,” he says.

“The lesson I learnt was that if it is not making business sense, don't hold on to it. Stop holding sentimentally to something that is killing and eating you up slowly.”

The chicken, however, did well, and that is how Karuga’s Wendy farms became so popular in poultry farming.

He has expanded Wendy farms to Kirinyaga, where, through a joint partnership, he has leased 25 acres on which he does mixed farming of sweet potatoes, beekeeping, and poultry farming.

He offers monthly trainings every first Saturday.

GROWTH IN THE INDUSTRY

According to the 2018 Economic Survey, people in the agriculture industry grew from 332.1 thousand in 2017 to 336.6 thousand in 2018.

The industry was also counted among the three leading sectors providing wage employment.

The report states the value of agricultural production increased in the last four years by 11.4 per cent to Sh497.9 billion in 2018.

“Agricultural output at current prices increased by 7.8 per cent to Sh3,346.3 billion, while input increased by 13.5 per cent to Sh461.1 billion in 2018,” the report says.

It, however, states that the share of recorded sales of produce from small-scale farmers decreased from 73.3 per cent to 73.1 per cent in 2018.

With 10 years of experience in farming, Karuga advises anyone who wants to join agribusiness to always identify the market first.

He says key players should stop producing expecting an intervention from the government.

“Produce because you have identified a market. The work of government is not to look for a market for farmers but to create an enabling environment,” the agronomist says.

“I am a believer of the cyclic model of farming rather than block farming, and I think that is where farmers go wrong. When we talk of market, it is vital for farmers to understand your market and dynamics of the weather and how prices keep fluctuating. For example, in the months of July, August, September and October, we have big and better-looking onions from Tanzania.”

Karuga also wants the government to reduce cess and introduce inter-county trade before thinking of the export market.

“I believe in Pan-Africanism, but before we do intra-Africa trade, we need to trade amongst ourselves. We first need to do business locally. The government needs to talk to the people on the ground and listen to our voices. There must be something we know,” he says.

“I'm not here for the money, I am fulfilling a purpose.”