Investing in Makueni County

When Makueni County is mentioned, most people get this picture of a very dry and dusty area, with no plantations since the geographic region in which this county is located is associated with severe droughts.

What most people are not aware of is that this is the county that Makueni County is the source of most of the juicy mangoes enjoyed by many city dwellers. Fruit farming in Makueni county is practiced both at large and small scale.

Makueni County was ranked as the top most mango producer among all Kenyan counties. This is the reason why interested investors should take advantage of this opportunity and invest their resources in this county as they are sure of great returns.

Despite the huge production rate of the sweet fruit, farmers tend to incur losses especially at the post-harvest stage of the fruits. This happens due to the poor harvesting methods, poor storage, transportation and poor packaging.

Mangoes are very delicate fruits and they need proper handling for them not to go bad. This is an urgent matter that needs attention by putting up a mango processing plant near the farmer. After harvesting, the fruits will not need to be transported to very long distances as the actory will be near. This will in turn increase the production rate of the fruit.

Farmers need to be equipped with modern farming techniques that they will use to help them boost their yield. Investors in this field can lease out farming equipment to the farmers, since most of them cannot afford to buy them as they tend to be very expensive.

A research showed that majority of the mangoes grown in Kenya are not preferred in the European countries, yet these are the main markets that we depend on. this will be an opportunity for investors to come up with the preferred seedlings or the farmers so that they can abandon the poor farming methods.

The Processing plant will open up the unexploited potential among farmers as they will see the benefit of abandoning the traditional farming methods and embracing technology. It will be significant to them as they will be encouraged to add more efforts on trying out the new farming techniques that they will have been equipped with.

Article by Vera Shawiza.