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NEWS & CURRENT AFFAIRS

The Nairobian

Pixie farmer builds multi-million-shilling empire in Ukambani

Crop

By Philip Muasya | Sep 02, 2020

**Peter Mwaka, 71, shows some of his pixie trees with ripe fruits at his 30 acre Joyland Farms in Muthyoi village, Makueni county**. [John Muia, Standard]

Some nine kilometres off the Machakos–Wote Road lies a forest of fruit farm located few yards from a dusty weather road to Emali.

From corner to corner, Joyland Farms at Muthyoi village, Makueni County, is an endless maze of citrus fruits, some ripe while others are still flowering.

“Have a taste of this, it is called Washington novel. This here is minneola (bell-shaped) while that one over there is Pixie, the sweetest of them all,” says Peter Mwaka, while taking The Smart Harvest through a tour of his expansive farm which is weighed down by over 4,000 citrus trees, mostly the Pixie.

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In a season, which is between June and September, the farm can produce between 50 – 70 tonnes of Pixie fruit, not to mention the other citrus fruits.

With a kilo going for between Sh80 and Sh120, the farmer is always earning good money.

For over four decades, the retired primary school teacher has been into citrus farming and with 30 acres, it is easy to describe him as the kingpin of Pixie in the region.

His farm dwarfs other small-time Pixie farmers nearby. He also grows rough lime and yellow lime. His favourite, however, is the Pixie, a yellow coloured fruit with a rough texture but easy to peel. It is fleshy, juicy and sweet.

The farmer started in 1976 when he was a newly employed teacher and where he would intercrop his trees with maize and pigeon peas. Later he phased out the other crops. He says hard work was ingrained on him by his father, a church elder and a man of military mien.

It is the same values Mwaka says he has strived to pass over to his six children in order to kill dependency.

He would juggle school work and his farm, always waking up his sons at 3 am to go till the farm using ox-drawn ploughs under the light of lanterns.

“They might have thought I was a bother to them but today they have seen the fruits of hard work,” says the farmer who has created a fruit empire in Ukambani worth tens of millions of shillings.

Mwaka says his routine of tending to his trees before leaving for school put him at loggerheads with education inspectors because often times he would arrive late, even when he was the teacher on duty.

By then he had started raking in a tidy sum of money from his venture and the allure of farm money made him somehow lax in school work.

He remembers arriving in school late one morning only to find education inspectors at the parade. He was immediately summoned to the headteacher’s office and tongue-lashed.

“But I told them I could not arrive early as much as I wanted. I told them I needed first to improve my home’s score however much I wanted to improve the school’s mean score,” says the old man with a smile. He was given a few days to show cause why he should not be transferred.

That evening, he borrowed a typewriter and hammered his resignation letter which he handed in the following day.

That was in 2010 February after which he plunged headlong into Pixie farming. It turned out to be his biggest break.

“That year alone, I got more money than I had in my 37 years of teaching. I bought my first car, a brand new car from the UK and remained with enough money to invest,” he says.

His other car, a Toyota Hillux pick-up is ever on the road, mostly to Nairobi to deliver the fruits to his customers. Most of his customers are juice-making companies, supermarkets and even exporters.

Between 2016 and 2018, Mwaka, supplied Pixie to Naivas headquarters in Nairobi where he raked in a fortune.

“They gave me a good price of Sh170 per kilo and I would deliver three times per week,” he says. A trip would be between 1000 and 1500 kilos.

He, however, says there is a downside with supermarket supplies as the returns (fruits that go bad in the shelves) can be discouraging. He remembers at one time getting returns worthy Sh120,000. The value for this money is deducted from the next supply, he says.

For one to have fruits all year round, the trees need to get sufficient water, the farmer says. A sizable basin around every tree can gulp up to three jerricans of 20 litres each.

“You have to flood the basin with water every three weeks. This way, coupled with the right pesticides will give you fruits throughout the year,” explains the farmer.

Keen to have a reliable water source for his trees, the farmer sank a borehole in 2013 at Sh1.6 million through a bank loan. Sadly, the borehole caved in at 60 feet. In 2017, he sank another high volume borehole which has been his mainstay.
The farmer says that when there is stiff competition in the market, he is able to delay his trees from producing by subjecting them to stress of up to two months, during which period they are denied water.
“After the stress, you give water and they burst into flower buds ready to give fruits,” he says.

Initially, he used drip irrigation with the source being a shallow well from a stream that cuts near his farm.

When well-watered and taken care of, a Pixie tree gives the first yield at two years. Those who rely on rainwater will have to wait until five years and the stunted growth means low-quality yield.