Joel Muthomi is a farmer from Meru County who has been involved in tea farming for over a decade.
Since getting into farming, he shared that he has never failed to provide for his family as it was the case when he was employed.
Having grown up in a family involved in substance farming, Muthomi is proud of how far he has gotten in farming by himself.
Here is Muthomi’s story as told by WoK.
Growing up, Muthomi’s family lived off tea farming.
In an interview, he said how he envied one of their neighbours who owned large tea bushes, inspiring him to get into farming in future.
“I grew up walking on my neighbor’s tea farm, plucking, weeding the tea bushes, applying fertilizer and delivering tea to the tea collection centre,” he said.
Muthomi worked on his dream and he now owns over 4,000 tea bushes which produces at least 460khs of tea leaves monthly.
He sells his produce to brokers although most of it goes to Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA),
Muthomi shared that he has used profits from his tea farming venture to get into tomato farming, dairy farming and poultry farming.
Tea farming
The first tea seedlings were introduced by the white settlers in 1903 in Limuru on experimental basis.
Some of these tea bushes have grown into large trees, forming historical features on what is now Unilever’s Mabroukie Tea Estate.
Although few private farmers established small tea gardens in Limuru and Kericho, commercial cultivation of tea in Kenya began in 1924 and remained an exclusive preoccupation of the colonialists until 1956 when African growers were allowed to start planting tea.
Tea is grown in the highlands located within the West and East of Rift and on higher altitude of between 1,500 metres and 2,700 metres above Sea Level.
The highlands are spread across tea-growing counties including Nakuru, Narok, Kericho, Bomet, Nyamira, Kisii, Kakamega and Bungoma.
Others are Viihiga, Nandi, Elgeyo Marakwet, Trans-Nzoia, Kiambu, Murang’a, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Embu, Tharaka-Nithi and Meru.
The growing conditions for tea include tropical volcanic red soils and favorable weather patterns such as well-distributed rainfall of between 1200 mm to 1400 mm per annum.
Unlike other countries, Kenya produces tea year round with minimal seasonal variations in quantity owing to its location along the equator.
