Agriculture has, for many years, formed the backbone of Kenya's economy: the agriculture sector contributes about 30 per cent of the GDP and accounts for 80 per cent of national employment. In addition, the sector contributes more than 60 per cent of the total export earnings and about 45 per cent of government revenue, while providing for most of the country's food requirements. The sector is estimated to have a further indirect contribution of nearly 27 per cent of GDP through linkages with manufacturing, distribution, and other service related sectors.(http://www.pwc.com/ke/en/industries/agriculture.jhtml)

The role that Agriculture plays in Kenya's economy cannot be overemphasized. However, it is more often than not overlooked as an investment choice for many reasons including ignorance. It is this challenge that I want the contrubutions to adress. Let me put it in the form of a question.

What small scale agricultural activities can one start with little capital on limited acreage of land, say o.5 to 5 Acres and what are the requirements (soil type, water, labour). What yield can one expect on say per acre and after how long(yield). What are the approx. returns per acre?

We can start with; onions, tomatoes, chilli etc.

With a piece of land ranging from 0.5 to 5 acres, i would recommend you to start breeding rabbits and eventually slaughter them for their meat.

A few weeks ago, in the Business Daily it was announced that a group of farmers are setting up a KES 1.2 billion processing plant in the Kiambu county. Just google; Rabbit farmers line up Sh 1.2bn processing plant.

Currently I am breeding my stock so that I can get some nice cash towards the end of these year and early new year. When i say good cash, I imply around a million in a single month.

Rabbit keeping is very easy and one can run another venture at the same time without hustles. The rates at which the meat is being disposed are very lucrative.

People in Nairobi, Kiambu and Riftvalley have formed Saccos / associations so that they can pull their investments together and be able to meet the demands both locally and internationally.

Majority of times is when one is given a tender / contract to deliver at least 100kgs per week of rabbit meat which ideally translates to slaughtering 40 to 50 rabbits - depending of their weights - each and every week.

The upside is that rabbit breed pretty fast but still the demand is very high. If the establishment of the processing plant is successful as scheduled end of this year, then I see other forms meats conceding their market shares to the rabbit industry in the short term.

The statistics pertaining the demand that is building up rapidly include a 40million population that is likely not to be sustained by the current farmers since once the young peoples start their own families in the near futures the number of farmers to entire population will be thinly stretched. I believe rabbit meat is the future.

Rabbit meat is known to be very sweet, tender and very nutritious as compared to other meat.

I always ask myself how many people eat rabbits?The restaurant i frequent have no menu featuring rabbit meat as a delicacy.Someone would argue this is a preserve of the five-star hotels,then the question begs how many patrons in these few hotels partake to this delicacy.Still numbers don't add up.May be the international markets.But that is maybe.Do i miss something! javascript:insertsmiley('%20','/Images/Emoticons/eusa_doh.gif')

The other day in KBC biz show I saw some guys in Nyanza had replicated a commercial flower plant project from ideas borrowed in a Naivasha farm and it appears they are picking up well. Didn't get the details of species planted, acreage etc. Anyone with ideas?..

Hello I new member ^^"

Thanks Story teller, they are the guys. Thank you All for ur contributions, Wazuans we need more sharing, am sure we got many farmers amongst us.

@brayokasa4,
What kind of soil is at loitokitok and where do you get water from?

We have sandy loam soil. I have drilled a borehole on site which has a capacity of 30,000 liters of water a day, though I don't need all that water so I sell it to other farmers.
By the way, when doing greenhouse farming ,put a lot of dried cow dung, not that green dung , but the one which has dried until it looks powdery. That will save you a lot of $$$$ in fertilizers. It really works , trust me.

For one greenhouse, inclusive of fertilizers, seeds,chemicals ,drip system, protective clothing, around 130k .But you can opt to buy these things separately from different supliers. Like buy the net from Thika, drip system from Kari, etc. A bit tricky though if you dont know what exactly u r doing.

@ Ceinz. The most suitable investments depend on location due to variability of factors such as demand, climate, physical, organisational and institutional infrastructure etc. across regions. For instance, with 1-2 acres of land in areas near Nairobi, activities such as horticulture, commercial poultry (both layers and broilers production) and dairy can pay quite handsomely. A major challenge for many of our farmers is the seasonal variation in output prices as our agriculture is largely rain fed. Ways to deal with this include technologies such as irrigation (in case of horticulture) and feed preservation (hay, silage etc) in case of livestock activities such as dairy. For famers who are able to guarantee supply, they can enter into contracts with buyers so as to mitigate the adverse effects of poor prices during pick production seasons. Note that the buyer also befits because he is assured of supply when products get scarce.