Several years after being dismissed from the Kenya Air Force in 1982 following the attempted coup against President Daniel arap Moi’s regime, Titus Kanguthu is making a fortune in farming.
The former soldier with the defunct Kenya Air Force today grows horticultural produce and rears fish in a desolate village on the outskirts of Kitui Town. He recalls bitterly how he was arrested and detained at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison for four months only to be released without charges.
He had just served four years in the force and was stationed in Wajir when the coup was planned and executed in Nairobi. “Immediately our plane touched down in Nairobi, we were captured by gun-totting soldiers and within no time we were in Kamiti, oblivious of the Air Force’s involvement in the coup,’’ recalls Kanguthu.
Nevertheless, he was summarily dismissed from the military, throwing him into a state of despair. “I knew nothing about the coup,” Kanguthu says.
After being sacked, he stared at a bleak future in the face. “I was keen on farming to change my fortunes. I decided to try horticulture farming with only Sh30,000 I had earlier saved from the Post Office as a casual worker,” he says.
Today, Kanguthu is a leading farmer specialising in horticulture— tomatoes, onions, water- melons, passion fruits— fish and poultry production on his 10-acre land in Mulango Location. “Still, I feared commercial farming can only be done along the banks of big rivers with a reliable source of water. So, I leased land in Thaana Nzau area on the banks of River Tana in Mwingi West sub-county to grow watermelon,” he says.
Constant advice by Ministry of Agriculture officials convinced him that farming can be practised even along seasonal rivers so long as one devised proper ways of harnessing water. Once he got the experience in Mwingi, he retreated to his home village.
First, he dug a 40-foot deep borehole along Kalundu river, a seasonal stream that has now become his lifeline. With support from the National government’s Economic Stimulus Programme, he built a fish pond and acquired 200 fingerlings.
The project gave him a foundation to expand his farming endeavours. “From the sale of the first produce, I established six more fish ponds stocking each with 2,000 fingerlings. The population of mature fish ready for sale in any given time is worth not less than Sh12,000,” says Kanguthu.
At one time predators invaded one of the ponds and killed the entire fish stock. Kanguthu quickly eliminated the predator before the other ponds were attacked. “At first, marketing was also a problem, but as time went on consumers started knocking at the farm gates from as far as Machakos and Thika towns,” he says.
He advises farmers from semi-arid areas to diversify as relying on one activity is too risky.
due to changing weather patterns. ‘’What I have realised in arid and semi-arid lands is that crops perceived as ‘foreign’— water melons, cabbages, passion fruits, mangoes and capsicum — can do well and are of high quality compared to those produced in high potential areas,” observes Kanguthu.
As a result, he says, horticultural produce from dry areas like Kitui is preferred to produce from Mount Kenya and other high potential areas even by horticulture exporting merchants. ‘’My water melon and passion fruits draw buyers from Nairobi, Thika and Mombasa,” he says.
In a good month, he earns between Sh60,000 and Sh80,000 from the sale of varies horticulture produce and fish.
Among those who have borrowed a leaf from Kanguthu is the Mulango African Inland Church (AIC) which has established three fish ponds to sell to its members. More than 60 farmers in the location are also intensifying passion fruits and water melon production through Mulango Horticulture Farmers Association of which he is the chairman.
