Diary of a Poultry farmer: Why do I keep poultry? Well, here is my million-dollar response

A young poultry farmer feeds his flock in his Kitengela poultry farm, Kajiado. PHOTO | LEOPOLD OBI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Bill Gates, the world’s richest man on record, foremost philanthropist and city boy raised in Seattle, is betting on rearing chickens to be the surest way to improve the lots of billions languishing in poverty.
  • Agriculture contributes to about 30 per cent of our GDP and in 2015 alone, out of Kenya’s US$70 billion national wealth, poultry industry contributed a total of $6.3 billion.
  • Bill Gates has even gone ahead and donated 100,000 chicks to poor households in two dozen countries in West Africa.

Many readers have asked me why I rear poultry. This question came back to haunt me when I read a blog by someone I least expected to remotely consider raising chicken a “business idea”.

The blog started with this simple question: “If you were living on two dollars a day, what would you do to improve your life?”

Two days later, by sheer coincidence, I read another blog by someone who after severing links with his remote village for better prospects of a city life, returned to his roots in farming and found the meaning of life (DN, June 9, 2016).

Guess what, while in the big city, he didn’t just own a house in the leafy suburbs, drive a top-of-the-range car or own a company listed on the stock exchange-- he rose to become the Head of State.

I know you are itching to know which dollar billionaire and former president are so passionate about farming. Read on.

In case you think this is boring, I beg your indulgence; there is a moral and policy angle to this story. But before I get to specifics, let me share a personal story.

I grew up in the rural hills of Samia in Busia County where we were required to go to the farm every morning before heading to school. Back then, rearing poultry was considered a side-show and a “woman’s thing” and commercialising the venture was unheard of.

For a fact, my father Enock, a headteacher at the local primary school, and my mother Agnes, a dedicated housewife, raised the 12 of us virtually on income from growing maize, cotton, groundnuts and beans.

I know that farming contributed significantly to my family’s income because four decades later, teachers are not the happiest lot pay wise and the cotton industry is dead and buried.

For sure, things have changed. We no longer have that unfathomable work ethic for manual work. The weather is also unpredictable. Most of the rivers and streams that meandered the terrain are now dry river beds.

HIGH INCOME FROM POULTRY

Then, we were assured of two rainy seasons and two bumper harvests. The soils have also been denigrated. Then, you could simply drop a seed, walk away and return months later to a bumper harvest.

I need more space to recount the sad story of maize farming and elite capture.

Now, Bill Gates, the world’s richest man on record, foremost philanthropist and city boy raised in Seattle, Washington, is betting on rearing chickens to be the surest way to improve the lots of billions languishing in poverty.

Olusegun Obasanjo, former Nigerian President and chair of the new Africa Food Prize is betting on farming as the next opportunity to create employment, reduce poverty and improve nutritional status of 3.1 million children a year who suffer malnutrition.

For now, you can ignore the statistics below, but I must warn you that numbers, when accurate, don’t lie. I consulted a leading economist on what agriculture in general and poultry specifically contribute to our total wealth as a nation.

To this day, her answer shocked me: “Agriculture contributes to about 30 per cent of our GDP and in 2015 alone, out of Kenya’s US$70 billion national wealth, poultry industry contributed a total of $6.3 billion”.

Now, if you are still surprised why Gates thinks rearing chicken is the best idea after manna fell from heaven, I recommend divine intervention.

Gates has even gone ahead and donated 100,000 chicks to poor households in two dozen countries in West Africa. I hope our policy-makers and politicians developing manifestos for the next elections are reading this.

Of course, as a tried and tested entrepreneur, I believe Gates won’t find this surprising: Learning comes from action and no amount of technical knowledge can replace the practical knowledge that exists only in use.

TESTIMONIALS

I have walked the talk and here is my free advice to Gates.
I have faced many challenges ranging from animal and human predators, inadequate housing, disease control, poor nutrition, uncontrolled cross breeding and ill-defined marketing outlets.

I can testify in any court of law that rearing chicken under free-range conditions is not capital intensive, until a bush baby knocks at the door and mauls 38 of your best birds in two weeks (SoG, Nov 8, 2015).

Another things I have learnt the hard way is that having access to cheap vaccines is not enough if you are the only one in the village vaccinating your birds against the deadly New Castle Disease, or if the local retailer has no back-up power to maintain the cold chain during a night long blackout (SoG 15th November 2015).

For a fact, scavenging doesn’t provide adequate nutrition to chicken and this affects egg production and weight gain. I have been forced to supplement with fish meal, soya, maize, sunflower cake and oyster shells (SoG January 16, 2016).

For unknown reasons, marketing channels for poultry products are not well defined and small scale farmers like me are always victims of brokers who pay cheap to sell at a profit (SoG April 8, 2016).

For now, I can’t wait to read the midterm report of Gate’s new Postpone Poverty Poultry Project (4Ps).