- Kibathi said after leaving his carpentry job in 1984, he tried his hand in various small businesses but nothing seemed to work. In 1997, he decided to start growing vegetables.
- Going forward, Kibathi said he is planning to expand the seedling venture which is currently under one and a half acre.
Stephen Kibathi, a 62-year-old farmer from Kinari, Kiambu county, has found a goldmine from selling vegetables. He makes Sh3,000 daily.
Kibathi shares his journey from making Sh35 per day as a carpenter three decades ago to making it big in vegetable business.
He is well known at the Soko Mjinga area along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway, known for selling fresh vegetables.
He is one of the main suppliers of kales, spinach and cabbages in the ever busy highway market.
Kibathi said after leaving his carpentry job in 1984, he tried his hand in various small businesses but nothing seemed to work. In 1997, he decided to start growing vegetables.
He said he has never looked back and is grateful for the wake up call that happened 30 years ago.
He grows spinach, sukuma wiki and cabbages in one-and-quarter-acre farm and makes at least Sh3,000 in a day from the sale of sukuma wiki and spinach.
He sells 60 bags of 50kg of spinach and sukuma wiki after every two weeks and a bag fetches between Sh1,000 to Sh2, 000.
In a month Kibathi sells 120 bags of the vegetables to traders.
“I have six casual workers who assist me in the farm, harvesting the vegetables and for the traders who come to buy the produce early in the morning so they can take them to various markets,” says Kibathi.
He also has about 15,000 pieces of cabbages which he anticipates to sell at Sh40 per piece.
Kibathi supplies his cabbages to a school in the area and the remaining pieces are bought by traders in the local Soko Mjinga market.
The father of six said he does not use synthetic fertiliser and he prides in the fact that all his produce is grown organically and only uses manure from his two dairy cows.
The Kinari Makeu Farm owner said he uses slurry from a bio digester which supplies enough manure for his five-acre farm.
“It took me three years for the bio digester to be operational and since then, I have been able to save a lot of money from buying manure. Earlier I used 18 tonnes of manure which is about four lorries in a year. A lorry of manure was going for Sh35,000, so I have been able to save almost Sh140,000,” said Kibathi.
Besides growing and selling vegetables, he is also selling seedlings which most of the time are done by order.
“I started the vegetable nursery in 2007 and since then I have been able to get nearly 1,000 farmers that prefer to buy my seedlings. So far it is a good venture and I make close to Sh100,000 from the sale of sukuma wiki, spinach and cabbage seedlings. Lately, I have also gotten into managing vegetable farms for people that want to follow into my footsteps and commercialise vegetable farming,” says Kibathi.
Going forward, Kibathi said he is planning to expand the seedling venture which is currently under one and a half acre.
He adds that he wants to do this by constructing a greenhouse in order to get into commercial vegetable nursery farming by 2023.
“I want to start selling kales, spinach and cabbage seedlings in bulk. So far, I have been selling them to farmers from as far as Uganda and Malindi through the digital farmer platform on Facebook and referrals from customers,” he said.
(Edited by Tabnacha O)