Patrick Kirui is an agriprenuer majoring in passion farming.
Before venturing into farming, he engaged in other jobs including working as a marketer for a motor-vehicle company.
However, Kirui quit the job to explore opportunities in other sectors.
Here is his story as told by WoK.
After graduating from Kabarak University in 2018, Kirui started looking for a job that could sustain him after school.
He was able to secure a job and he was employed as a marketer for a motor vehicle company in Nakuru City.
The pay was on commission basis and for six months he worked at the firm, he was only able to sell one vehicle.
After contemplating about the same, he realized that it was not the right job for him, and he needed to look for something else to do.
Kirui turned to entrepreneurship and started selling passion fruits having engaged in the business in the past.
“Selling cars was a seasoned job, so I decided to quit and fully venture into passion fruits. I started selling passion fruits in 2010 when I was still a student at a local secondary school,” he said.
Out of the business, he was able to raise a capital of Ksh 50,000 which he used to venture into passion farming.
Kirui used Ksh 20,000 to lease 2 acres of land in Nakuru and and Ksh 30,000 to buy fertilizer, herbicides, ploughing and labour.
He then got seedlings from a relative at no cost. He harvests 600kg of passion fruits from the farm and sells them at Ksh 120 per kg.
Kirui makes Ksh 60,000 from the farm every month after deducting Ksh 12,000 production cost.
“Sometimes when ferrying my produce to the market, I buy more fruits from my village and sell them at a profit to boost my earnings,” he explained.
He faces among other challenges fluctuation of market prices which is often caused by high supply.
“When the supply at the market is high, the demand lowers and we end up selling a kilo at Ksh 80 which is a big loss,” Kirui said.
