For nearly 20 years, Athanas Tuiyot was happy with his job as journalist and the bureau chief of a daily newspaper in Eldoret until his bosses decided to transfer him to Nairobi in 2006. He opted to quit.
The new position would have allowed him only two days off, and he felt he could not effectively balance his family needs in Eldoret and professional obligations working in Nairobi, about 300 kilometres away.
“My employer had only a provident fund, which was not adequate to take care of me in retirement,” he says. For 17 years in service, he received a paltry Sh217,000.
He tried his hands at farming. He started off by growing cabbages and tomatoes on a little piece of land for his family’s consumption. Then he visited the Eldoret Agricultural Society of Kenya Show. That marked the beginning of his journey into the world of horticulture on his two-and-a-quarter acre piece of land at Chepkanga in Uasin Gishu County.
He began with the Jambar F1 onions variety, and he has never regretted. He says it brought him into contact with ‘real’ money for the first time. Today, Mr Tuiyot grows onions and has a crop throughout the year. An acre fetches him about 20 tonnes. In a good season, this can earn a farmer over Sh1 million, selling a kilo for over Sh50 at the farm gate price.
From his farm, the former journalist has been able to pay fees for his three children through to college. From the success of his first experiment, where he planted one-tenth of an acre and harvested 2.4 tonnes, his love affair with onions continues. “I got my first pay package of Sh100,000 and decided that that was what I wanted to do,” he says.
Mr Tuiyot has one advantage, as he lives just about 10 kilometres from Eldoret Town, which is one of the main markets in the region. “Unlike working in a newsroom where you face many challenges and worries about the likelihood of being sacked, here you have a peace of mind,” he says.
