Youthful engineer from Meru prefers soiling his hands in the farm

MERU: While fellow engineers are grappling with complex numbers involving structures, designs and all, one engineer is happy soiling his hands.

We caught up with Oscar Gitonga, 25, at his 12-acre farm in Mitunguu, Meru County.

The farm is an empire of bananas where he sells over 10 tonnes every month with a ready market in Nairobi, Mombasa and within his locality.

And just how did an engineer land in the farm?

“I studied Telecommunications and Information Engineering at Liaoning University of Technology in China and graduated in 2013. I came back that same year and started looking for a job. After a month of intense job hunting, I got a job with a Chinese firm that was paying Sh55,000. I took up the offer though I thought the pay was too little for an engineer,” he says.

Gitonga worked for a while, then when he was satisfied he had saved up enough, he quit to venture into farming.

BEST PRACTISE

“Inasmuch as I was an engineer, I always had this strong passion to venture into farming. So when I quit, the next best bet for me was the farm. Because I had no land in town, I headed back to the village to try banana farming,” he tells Smart Harvest.

Gitonga says his love for farming was imparted into him by his father, an agriculture teacher in high school.

Once in the village, Gitonga used his savings to buy a 12-acre farm that was virgin land then.

To roll out his project, he prepared the land and subdivided it.

On two acres, he planted 400 stems of bananas, in another two acres he planted 1,500 stems of pawpaw. On the remaining eight acres, he planted maize, but later on did away with the project and instead planted more banana stems.

Two years down the line, his farm is the talk of the village and a training centre where locals, schools, some institutions of higher learning, and individuals from all walks of life flock in to learn best practice.

Gitonga says the reason his farm has thrived is because of the way he does things differently.

Since bananas take nine months to mature, and a while before forming a canopy, Gitonga integrates other crops such as pawpaw, water melon and butternut that act both as waiting crops and cover crops.

“Before planting bananas, I start with pawpaws which I plant six months prior to the time I plan to plant bananas. Once the pawpaw starts flowering, I plant bananas and during this time I also integrate other cover crops that also act as waiting crops such as water melon and butter nuts which fetch premium returns in the market,” he explains.

For the waiting crops, he harvests on average 27 tonnes of pawpaw, 17-20 tonnes of water melon and 10 to 15 tonnes of butter nut. He sells a piece of pawpaw for between Sh50 and Sh60 depending on the size.

For the watermelons, he sells them for between Sh50 to Sh100 depending on the size.

BE BOLD

Of all the waiting crops, pawpaw fetches him the most because in a good season he makes between Sh800,000 to a Sh1 million per acre.

He says when planting them, he does so two months before any rainy season.

“Banana roots develop fast during the dry season. Upon digging a hole of 3f × 2f, he uses farm yard manure which he mixes with a glass of DAP fertiliser and plants the banana stem.

He later applies a type of fertiliser called 17 when top dressing.

In his farm, Gitonga has different varieties of bananas — Grand Nain, Williams hybrid, Chinese dwarf, Kampala, Apple Banana and Kiganda.

Gitonga also keeps cows and chicken. For the cows he feeds them with nappier grass, dry maize stalks and calliandra.

He also plants cow peas for livestock feed. He feeds them to the cows once the pods develop for maximum milk production.

The ambitious engineer also keeps kienyeji chicken which he sells to locals.

Every farmer goes through challenges and Gitonga is no exception.

“Many at times, the pawpaws are attacked by the red spider mites or the root worms causing the plant to wither. This leads to massive loss of fruits,” he says. Unfortunately, he has not found a solution and is still consulting with experts on the way forward.

His bananas, are at times affected by weevils, nematodes, yellow and black sigatoka a condition that causes premature ripening in bananas. He is yet to find a lasting solution to this challenge.

Parting shot for aspiring young farmers: “Dare to dream and take calculated risks. If you don’t risk, you risk even more. Success only favours the bold.”