Why grow Capsicums

James Mwai, is a successful capsicum farmer in the semi-arid Mananya area of Machakos County. His farm is well managed, farmhands carrying out activities with less supervision and is a successful escapade to behold. The traditional belief that farming in Kenya and Africa is for the poor man is gradually being replaced by flourishing farmers.

According to Mwai, capsicum is worth farming. While hailing this agri-business as one among the best investments one can possibly make good returns; he calls it a low cost, high yielding investment and describes it as one of the few farming produce with ready market.

Capsicum, also known as sweet pepper, bell pepper or pilipili hoho are consumed in nearly every household in Kenya. They are used to spice up cooked food and raw salads. All, capsicums are green in colour at the initial stages of growth and then with time they change colour according to the variety. They eventually turn into red, yellow, or remain green; the three main capsicum varieties grown in Kenya. The longer the capsicums stay in the field to physiological maturity, the sweeter they become.

“I have planted the super belly variety which is green in colour. With proper planning and quality control, growing capsicum is profitable, my target market being the local market, which include selling direct to consumers, open-air markets, wholesalers, food Kiosks as well as middle men who frequent my farm when the produce is ready,” Mwai confides.

He practices open field cultivation; currently his farm has 1,200 capsicum plants growing, which are at the final stage before they hit the market.

While doing a market study of which crop to farm, he stumbled upon capsicum whose prices at the market he says don’t fluctuate to lower levels like other fresh produce crops depending with the season. Moreover, Machakos being nearer to Nairobi was an icing on the cake considering the ever growing population of the capital city and its huge demand for food for sustenance.
As much as he encourages people to join farming, he has some cautionary words; that they should not just for profitability but because of passion for farming and not through the hype being created on social media.

“The beauty with capsicum is that they are not imported from our neigbouring countries like they do with onions and tomatoes thus its supply to the market is not well met. Infact, we need more farmers to practice capsicum farming to fulfill its growing demand,” he states.

It is an interesting time to be a smart farmer in Kenya. The appetite for agricultural produce and the opening up of regional markets is working in the favor of farmers. “With the ever growing population in Kenya, I would encourage young people to explore farming. In future from my own analysis aim seeing a scenario where the export market will get a beating due to the fact that the locally grown produce will be consumed locally,” Mwai says.

There are two ways to farm capsicum. The first way is through open ground farming and the second alternative is through greenhouse. The greenhouse option is more popular because it yields better harvests and minimizes on usage of pesticides and fungicides although it’s a bit expensive to set up

Open ground farming on the other hand isn’t all that bad either, it’s cheaper to set up and productivity be improved by tremendously by farmers getting the correct crop husbandry practices. To practice open ground farming a farmer requires a fertile piece of land and a reliable source of water and farmers in dry areas like Mwai need to drill a borehole. Consistent supply of water and labour to ensure that your farm is well taken care of and that production is optimized.

A greenhouse will boost production, reduce water consumption, prevent most of the common capsicum diseases and most importantly enhance quality. A capsicum fruit from a greenhouse is easy to distinguish and it easily finds market both locally and internationally. A well maintained greenhouse structure of 8meters by 15 meters can yield 180Kilograms on average per week or 1250Kilograms per harvesting season.