Bored with miraa, smart farmers in Meru go bananas

When Meru County is mentioned, the name that pops to mind is miraa or khat, not banana.

Actually in Kenya, banana has been synonymous with Kisii County but now the tables are turning and Meru is proving to be a home of bananas.

A revolution of sorts, the enthusiasm with which farmers in Meru County have embraced bananas is quintessence that with the right attitude and focused leadership in tow, no achievement is impossible.

It started just over a decade ago in the wake of dwindling earnings from coffee, a crop once feted as black gold. Eighty-year-old Aaron M’Aburi, former Chairman of Imenti South Banana Growers Association recalls all this too well.

“I had 10 acres under coffee in the late 1980s when the crop’s profitability started dwindling prompting me to uproot several trees. I have three acres under banana crop at the moment that I plan to increase as profitability picks momentum with a ready market. Our people are happier with bananas,” says M’Aburi.

In South Imenti Sub County where the banana industry in Meru has its epi-centre, free open markets are a daily phenomenon between Monday and Friday at Ntharene, Muruiri, Igoji, Mwichuine, kamachege and Kariene.

Vibrant markets

And what a site to behold as humans, bicycles, lorries and pick-ups jostle for space as bananas are sold, bought and packed to be ferried to destinations as far afield as Mombasa, Nakuru and Kisumu. The vibrant open markets aside, what gives farmers most fillip to plant bananas is the potential of a nascent value addition chain that is promising huge earnings once it is consummated in the future. M’Aburi says his defunct society set aside two acres of land at Tharanga near Ntharene for value addition ventures by interested investors.

“We had in mind small industries such as crisps and chips that some individuals are already doing and more lucrative capital-intensive ones such as juice, wine, flour milling and cattle feeds,” says M’Aburi.

Meru County Agriculture Executive Committee member Prof Karwitha Kiugu who says the County will work with interested investors. “We have in mind public private partnership especially for the production of wine from bananas,” she says.

She says the County is determined to have farmers maximise on their bananas even from peels and stems that are treated as waste today by farmers.

“We have within our sights the generation of electricity from banana pulp to reduce power cost and sell the surplus to the national grid,” says Prof Kiugu.

She says the raw material is massive as Meru produces 127, 575 tonnes of bananas annually on 8,505 acres that is literally snowballing as more people take up banana farming.

“Bananas earn Meru County Sh19 billion annually, an amount we hope to double through value addition,” she says.

“Whereas value addition is yet to start in earnest, she notes, a factory in Nairobi is already milling banana flour for the export in Europe.

Farmers credit the runaway revolution to the vision of Meru Governor Kiraitu Murungi whom they say saw the potential in the crop long ago.