The Agropreneur: Turn Sh15,000 investment in seedlings into Sh1.8m in profit in two years

the ultimate low cost business idea which is an investment opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs

Most business ideas arise from the desire to meet the need of a particular customer base looking for a specific good or service. However, some businesses ideas transcend an entrepreneur’s intended immediate customer base and have national impact. Agro-forestry is one such venture, and Mr Benson Kanyi is among a growing number of Kenyans making a living out of commercially producing trees. This group swears by agro-forestry being a profitable and sustainable business that also meets a national need.



“It is unfortunate that Kenya, with its good climate and potential for commercial tree farming, is still talking about unemployment when, at the moment, it is exporting jobs to neighbouring countries by importing electricity transmission poles,” says Kanyi.

For investors like Mr Habil Onyango, a Nairobi-based businessman with three acres under eucalyptus in his home district of Bondo, the demand for timber saw him uproot two acres of maize crop in 2009 to plant 4,000 eucalyptus seedlings. “I had taken my nephews to visit Kisumu’s ASK agricultural show in 2009 and I got a pamphlet about commercial tree planting from the Kenya Forestry Services (KFS) stand,” he says. Mr Onyango’s interest was piqued, and a week later, he got an officer from KFS to visit his farm and advise him on the best tree variety to plant. “I started my tree farm with 1,000 eucalyptus seedlings, which I bought for Sh15 each,” says Onyango.

“I later decided to go all in and uprooted the maize I had, which was not doing very well, and planted 3,000 more seedlings.” Two years later, his first batch of eucalyptus crop was about 12-feet long and he sold the trees at a local timber yard for Sh2,000 each, earning him Sh1,800, 000. “Some of the trees dried up and others were destroyed by ants, but I still made more than enough money to cover the loan I had taken to prepare and fence the land and buy inputs,” he says. There are several varieties of eucalyptus trees, and their seedlings retail at between Sh15 and Sh25. Some can be harvested from as early as 18 months, and each trunk sold as construction material for as much as Sh3,000. Electricity poles Others can take up to nine years to mature fully and fetch Sh18,000 when sold to Kenya Power for electricity poles.



There is the Eucalyptus grandisX camaldurensis, which is ideal for marginal areas, and other pure breeds for high yield areas such as the highlands. “We are soon going to offer the much more heat-tolerant hybrid eucalyptus grandisX urophylla from South Africa that has been undergoing testing in Kenya the last six years,” says Kanyi. “This species has a better diameter, produces more biomass within a relatively short time and has more tolerance to common pests.”

via Business Beat