A Kisii Member of the County Assembly is among residents who do sugarcane farming, which is a lucrative venture in the county.
Those who have properly exploited the activity have been smiling all the way to the banks and providing for their families with ease.
Samuel Apoko (above), one of the major sugarcane farmers in Nyaribari Masaba Constituency has been in the field for 10 years and he is not planning to quit, anytime soon. He has over 4 acres under kisukari cane variety.
Apoko, 44, who is in his second term as Kiogoro Ward MCA, hails from Matunwa Sub Location, Matunwa Location, Nyaribari Chache Constituency.
He has managed to educate his siblings in various county and extra county schools using proceeds from the farming venture.
He says the sugarcane takes 18 to 24 months to mature in the first season and one year in second and third seasons, noting the proceeds dwindle with each season.
Apoko sells the sugarcane to small scale traders who flock his farm at Ksh 15 per cane and mints up to up Ksh. 100,000 per season.
He observes that traders at Keumbu Center who forms part of his customers cut, bind and sell the canes at Ksh. 20 to passengers along the busy Kisii-Nairobi Highway.
“Large scale traders buy the cane, chop it and sell it expensively to consumers in urban areas,” says Apoko, stressing the chewing cane has the best juice nationally.
He leases land for the cane farming.
A part from sugarcane farming, the MCA is also embracing tea, avocado, kale, dairy, maize and banana farming, and poultry rearing.
“I enjoy every bit of my life other than that of politics,” he said during an exclusive interview with The Scholar Media Africa.
Poverty drove him into the industry when he realized he could not support his family with the meagre salary when he was working at Kisii General Hospital (now Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital) as a laboratory technician and had to moonlight to make ends meets before venturing into politics in 2013.
“I involved myself on cane farm during weekends. I hired locals to assist me,” says the politician cum farmer, noting he utilised well his recesses.
Apoko applies organic and inorganic fertilizers to boost the quality and quantity of the cane to fetch more money, adding they (canes) require thinning, weeding and pruning to thicken and grow up to three metres.
“My cows are on zero grazing and therefore I use the waste from my sugarcane pruning to feed them. This increases milk production for domestic consumption. We also sell some milk because it’s a lot,” said the county legislator as he showed me round his cow and poultry projects.
He says sugarcane farming is more profitable compared to tea farming which requires long bureaucratic processes with low earnings and unpredictable market trends, stressing some farmers prefer the former to latter.
To maximize on profits, he does proper timing with the season before he plants.
Some of the challenges he faces include invasion of moles, theft and dry spells. He uses rat trappers who charge Ksh. 50 per mole and has to monitor the canes periodically so that they are not eaten up by the clandestine rodents.
“I paid Ksh. 5000 to a youth who trapped 100 rats on my sugarcane farm,” recalls Apoko, stressing he gives neighbours free sugarcane to appease them to curb theft.
Kisii County government recently partnered with Brij Kishore, an Indian investor to set up chewing cane cottage industry to process the crop, create jobs and boost farmers’ incomes.
Governor James Ongwae said the investor had availed appropriate machinery and technologies to add value to horticultural and cash crops to benefit the locals.
Ongwae says a sugarcane factory is to be set up in South Mugirango constituency to crush industrial sugar, adding products from chewing and industrial cane will flood local and national markets.
If the county boss’s promise is anything to go by, it will revitalize the cane industry and encourage farmers to embrace sugarcane farming in the wake of demoralization among farmers. A good number of them have already sort alternative farming due to low market prices of canes and delayed payments.
