Mercy Muthoni is the founder of Shamba Connect.
I have always loved farming and in particular organic farming. My agribusiness venture is called Shamba Connect. It deals with the installation of farming gardens to homes and institutions.
My target clientele is the urban dweller who desires to own a small garden on a limited space. In addition, I have branched to rabbit farming since it complements farming on small areas such as kitchen gardens.
I started my venture in 2018 by farming and delivering fruits and organic vegetables to homes. My startup capital was Sh. 100,000 which I drew from my savings.
I believe in paying myself first, and had been saving 10 per cent of my monthly income. Over the last few years, I have reinvested part of my profits into this business and pulled more funds from my savings to accelerate its growth. Early this year, I decided to diversify my agribusiness output by turning to organic vertical gardens set ups.
When I started my kitchen gardens, I was aiming to just feed my family. However, I ended up producing much more veggies than I had planned. I started to distribute to family and friends.
While I did not make money in my first season, I grew my customer base for the gardens installation. Today, there is increased demand for the kitchen gardens and organic vegetables.  Farming, though, is not my main profession. I work as a banker.
Over the course of my banking career, I have been involved in sales and marketing, strategy and communications, and currently in quality assurance. The skills learnt from these roles have come in handy in running my agribusiness startup.
I remember how my decision to go into agriculture raised eyebrows. There were people who thought that since I was educated and had a good formal career, I had no business going into farming.
I started my business in Nairobi with Sh. 5 million capital, broke even after 5yrs
I have since come to observe that the perception that farming and farm-related ventures are of the idle and uneducated folks is one of the reasons why farming is either substandard or largely unexploited. Operational costs have been another challenge.
This is because organic pesticides and traditional pest- control methods cost more. Chemical pesticides are more effective in pest control. However, the residues from these chemical pesticides stay on the plants for a longer time.
Regardless, I committed to stay the course of organic food production, which has meant higher costs for fewer returns. Currently, my most prominent challenge is finding space to increase my vegetable farming. I want to go completely large scale.
I am currently scouting for land to lease and scale up to commercial organic vegetable and fruit farming. In the next five years, I see Shamba Connect gardens in a half of the homes and a third of institutions in Nairobi.
My tips for women who want to start an agribusiness
- Start with WHY. This will help give you a clear picture of your true intentions when setting off. Why do you want to start dairy farming instead of poultry farming or crop farming? Is it purely for the profits? Are you ready to commit?
- Follow the principle of continuous improvement. You may not have it all figured out at first, but take the first step, and keep improving your farming methods.
- Network. People do business with people they know and like. Take time and invest in people and relationships, and this will inevitably translate to your growth.
- Think outside the box. Agriculture covers a very wide scope. Find out what you can be best at and do not underestimate your contribution, whatever the size of your venture or the space in the ecosystem that you occupy.
- Mentorship. Learn from those that have been in farming longer than you have. Get hold of everything that symbolizes where you want to go and devour the lessons.
