By John Njiraini

When Nicholas Mwangi took a loan in 2003 and bought a one-acre piece of land in Kirinyaga District, he felt his dream had come true.

After five years of steady earnings from the crop, he was able to pay the loan.

"The last two years have been good and I felt proud being a coffee farmer," he said, adding that being paid an average of Sh25 a kilogramme was something he could never have imagined 10 years ago.

Today, however, the sweet memories seem to be fading quickly and are being replaced by anger and disappointment.

"All of a sudden, the costs of inputs have gone up, our earnings are declining and payments are now irregular just as it used to be in the 90s," he says.

Mwangi is not alone and coffee is not the only crop experiencing tough times.

Farming has become a high risk business.

Being the single largest employer in the country with about 80 per cent of the population relying on it directly and accounting for 26 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP), agriculture is considered one of the most important sectors in the economy.

But for many farmers, and in particular small-scale ones, the sector is quickly becoming a daily source of agony and many are opting out to seek other means of earning a living.

This year has been bad for farmers across the coffee, tea, wheat, maize, sugar and horticulture sub-sectors.

Earnings have drastically plummeted, turning farmers to paupers.

For instance, maize farmers are up in arms against a Government decision to import three million bags to curb a looming food shortage.

Farmers, through the Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers (KENFAP), are demanding that the Government desist from fixing prices which they should sell their produce.

They want market forces determine the prices contrary to plans to import maize at Sh2,250, while buying from farmers at Sh1,950 a bag.

Agitated farmers in the breadbasket areas of the North Rift have threatened to hold demonstrations if the Government continues to set prices for the produce.

The situation has not been any better for tea farmers, many of whom have uprooted their bushes in favour of other crops.

While in 2006 tea farmers earned Sh47 billion, the earnings dropped to Sh30 billion last year and are expected to drop further this year due to high fertiliser, transport and labour costs.

For wheat farmers, the case is the same. In June farmers in Narok demonstrated when the Government lowered import duty that resulted in a drastic fall in prices.

Lowering import duty from 35 per cent to 10 per cent reduced the price of a 90 kilogramme bag of wheat from Sh3,900 to Sh2,000.

This is despite the fact that the cost of production has substantially increased from Sh7,000 to Sh15,000 for an acre over the past three years.

According to experts, agriculture has become a high risk means of earning a living as various forces conspire to make it difficult for farmers to lead a decent life from it.

This year, for instance, the weather patterns have been largely unpredictable and unreliable.

The long rains between March and June was not enough to enable farmers, who started ploughing their farms late due to the effects of the post-election violence, realise a bountiful harvest.

While the Kenya Meteorological Department in September predicted ‘reasonably good rainfall’ in most parts of the country during the October-December short rains, this has not been the case.