A farmer has shared his frustrations over the declining price of dragon fruits, likening it to quail bird farming which flopped after its popularity.
For the better part of 2023 and 2024, many farmers went into dragon fruit farming after seeing how lucrative the venture was.
However, it now turns out that prices of the fruit are declining, possibly because of farmers infiltrating the market.
Taking to Facebook, a farmer shared a video explaining how he invested in dragon fruit farming only for its prices to tumble.
“Let me show you the next quail business in Kenya… One post would be at least Ksh 3,000 but after it has grown and reached the top, the prices have dropped from Ksh 1,000 to Ksh 50. What will we do with these fruits? We hoped to be millionaires,” the farmer remarked.
As earlier reported on WoK, Walter Muange, a dragon fruit farmer from Masii, Machakos County explained that a dragon fruit bud takes 13 days to develop into a flower from a node after which it will open up for pollination on the night of the 13th day.
That is the only chance that the flower has to get pollinated, if pollination doesn’t happen then, the flower will not grow into a fruit.
Otherwise, it will develop into a fruit that will be ripe and ready for harvesting after 38 days since pollination.
Overall, it only takes 52 days from the day a fruit bud emerges to have a fruit ready.
Dragon fruits do well in arid and semi-arid areas with a temperature rate of between 20°c- 30°c and annual rainfall of about 40-60mm.
Pests that attack dragon fruits include mites, thrips, ants, scale insects, mealy bugs, beetles, slugs, borers, nematodes, fruit flies and rodents.
Diseases include stem rot, anthracnose and fungal pathogens such as Fusarium spp. and Aspergillus spp.
In his case, Muange has planted two branches in each of the 125 posts that he has mounted in his farm, explaining that he expects to harvest at least 50 fruits from each pillar in the farm.
“One stem should have five healthy branches and one branch can give you hopefully more than five fruits. Each pillar should be able to give you about 50 fruits,” he said.
Adding; “This is quite good as you know one fruit is retailing at about Ksh 1,500 a kilo; we sell as wholesale at Ksh 400 per piece or on low season KSh 600 per kilo.”
Muange uses old motorbike tires tied on top of the pillars to provide support for the dragon plants as they grow, and extra lighting for faster fruit production.
The farmer uses one liter of water per week on the dragon fruit plants on normal temperature and two liters of water on hot temperatures.
