When Priscilla Nyairia, joined university her dream was to pursue a career in corporate world. However, after meeting her husband the two would team up to venture into fruit farming, something she had never thought of.
Here is their story of how they found fortune in dragon fruit farming as told by WoK.
Background and Education
Priscilla is the firstborn in a family of two children. The farmer was raised by a single mother. She attended Wahari Primary School in Mukurweini before proceeding to Blessed Irene girls. She then pursued a computer science degree at South Eastern University of Kenya.
Farming Dragon Fruits
She met her husband while on attachment. He had done a Bachelor of Business in Information Technology. He told her that they needed to join forces and become farmers in order to be billionaires.
However, she was hesitant as farming had never been on her agenda. She didn’t even know anything about farming.
In 2020, she finally took him up on the offer and told her mother about him. She blessed their union and the two ventured into farming.
Her father-in-law is the man behind Wambugu Apples and he was surprised they wanted to do dragon fruit instead of apples.
He especially found the name disturbing and thought it was the devil’s plant. This misgivings would change after he saw how profitable it was.
Through her husband contacts, they were to get the fruit cuttings. They imported them for about US$20 each and began by about 100 plants. In their first sale, they made Ksh50,000 from 50 fruits after selling each at Ksh1,000.
This opened their eyes as made a million from a tonne of the fruits. This motivated them to even grow the fruits in their farm christened Wonderful Heaven.
They had to conduct research by themselves. Previously, they had consulted an agronomist who told them the fruits could not grow well in Kenya or even Africa.
According to the agronomist, the fruits could only grow in places like China and Philippines.
He instead told them to plant things like potatoes which they were uninterested in because of the middlemen needed to sell them. The couple proved him wrong as they have now grown the fruits in a larger area of land.
The fruits currently go for about Ksh300 each and she hopes more farmers would grow the fruits which is harvested about four times a year. Priscilla believes that the more people plant them the more they could meet the export demand.
Speaking to Lynn Ngugi, she said that a kilogram of powdered dragon fruit can sell for up to Ksh30,000 in the international market.
Priscilla Nyairia encourages youths not to despise agriculture as there is a lot of cash in the venture.