During my visit to Kenya I have been staying at Kakuzi Farms, a 14,000ha farming and commercial forestry operation in Thika, which covers everything from timber production to tea, and blueberries to Boran cattle.
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This morning I took a tour of their impressive avocado and macadamia plantations, which together cover around 10% of the farms and paid a visit to their state-of-the-art macadamia processing factory.

Kakuzi was originally a sisal and coffee operation, but since the late 90’s and into the early 2000’s, it branched into avocado and macadamia production, the temperate climate and red clay soils lending themselves to a perfect growing environment for these types of production.

Since 2018, a brand-new macadamia factory has been built which can process in peak harvest a maximum of 25T of nuts daily with the majority being exported to Asia, but some nuts processed for local consumption. All nuts leaving the factory are vacuum sealed into 11.34kg bags and are sold to Green & Gold Macadamias, who distribute them to buyers for further value addition e.g. roasting or different packaging requirements.

I arrived at the factory in mid-September, coinciding with the second crop of the year, with macadamia typically being harvested between February and July and August and December. Traditionally, 70% of the nuts are harvested in the first block of the year but due to a sustained drought and various other factors, Kakuzi has recorded a reduced production in the first block of the season and a flush in the latter.

Growing Macadamias

The ideal growing conditions for macadamia are well aerated, clay soils which lend themselves to good water retention. I was told that they have shallow roots and perform well in regions where coffee thrives.

The nursery growing stage takes one year, all seedlings are grafted, and it is a very labour intensive process in the early months, because the plants are very susceptible to pests such as millibugs, spider mites, blight and powdery mildew.

Macadamias are planted in the main plantations on the farm at one year old and although there is still work ongoing to measure the perfect spacing between trees and rows, they are currently planted on a 5x10m spacing. This allows for adequate spacing between the canopy, so when the tree is sprayed with chemical fertilisers it is blown into the canopy of the trees, instead of just the leaves.

Micro sprinklers are used to irrigate every tree, which are fed from 18 man-made dams which surround the whole site. The first fruit comes four years post-planting, but the plant reaches maturity and optimum picking around 7 or 8 years old. They are harvested by hand using long bamboo sticks with a hook on the end made from a U-shaped nail. They are individually harvested so not to disturb the other nuts which haven’t reached maturity. I was told they do not shake the trees to dislodge the nuts because you can risk destroying next year’s crop.

During peak harvest, there are 1000 pickers that work across three main macadamia sites covering 1040ha – plans are underway to extend the operation to 1500ha. All workers begin picking at 7am till 3pm and are expected to pick an average of 150kg daily. Kakuzi’s wider operation employs around 3000 people, which in a country where there are exceedingly high levels of unemployment, makes Kakuzi a major employer not only in the region but nationally and through their extension work in the surrounding communities, they support around 100,000 people.
 
Processing macadamias
We arrived at the factory at 0830 in the morning, one hour into processing and we followed the nuts from being brought into the factory operation site where they were de-husked before entering the factory lines, where the shells are separated from the nuts and graded into a number of categories depending on their size or any defects.

The large whole nuts come under grade zero, which is the top grade and sell for a price of around $23 per kilo and then the rest of the nuts are sorted for the likes of confectionary, fruit and nut mixes, baking, ground for flour and used for oil. Nothing is wasted and the shells are processed for the likes of animal feed for chickens and pigs, or they are fed into a biogas boiler and turned into energy to heat the sorting process.

Around 226 kilos are processed every day into oil, which involves the nuts being crushed and the oil extracted, producing around 113kilos of 100% pure macadamia oil. The husks which are discarded at the start, also have a use, and are turned into compost which is then fed back as a biological onto the macadamia plantations. The whole process is very circular in nature, nothing is wasted.
There were 116 people working in the factory this morning, the majority are women, and this is not only because the sorting process requires real dexterity, but because Kakuzi is trying to support low levels of employment, particularly among women.
At numerous stages throughout the sorting process, the machines will sort nuts from the shell, but parts are missed and they are unable to spot e.g onion rings around the more mature nuts or damaged skins which are only detected by the human eye. The factory has the latest in cracking and colour sorting technology, but automation cannot replace human skill and the two work in perfect symbiosis. 

This morning I headed off to Meru, three hours north of here, for a visit to Kisima Farms, where I met with Buzz Robertson, who heads up the arable side of the 12,000ha operation.

Buzz grew up in Kenya on this very farm and after studying at Harper Adams in England, returned to the farm and has been doing some really interesting work around improving soil health and experimenting with multi-cover cropping.

He operates a four-year rotation between pulses, wheat, canola and barley. Wheat grown on the farm is sold to local millers in Nairobi, barley is sent to near-by breweries and canola is sold via AgVenture – a cooperative – which turns it into rapeseed oil.

He explained that since he has taken over the arable operation they have experienced two years of drought - in one six-month period recording only 60ml of rainfall. However, in the next month, they are expected to be hit by a weather front they are calling El Nino, which is forecast to bring heavy rainstorms.

Kisima sits at 2,400m altitude and is blessed with extremely fertile soils and with the work Buzz and the team have been doing should cope well with the rain to come, but there are wider concerns for other parts of Kenya, where over cultivated, over grazed, compacted soils, are under threat of extreme flooding issues.

It was fascinating hearing from Buzz about the relationship that exists between people, agriculture and wildlife here in Kenya, not dissimilar to Tanzania in that they live in close proximity, but he explained to me that unlike in the UK, where wildlife and farming are sometimes seen as separate sectors, here the two go hand-in-hand. His entire operation lies in the middle of two major conservancies, with a wildlife corridor running through it, which is occupied by everything from lions to elephants and he has to manage his farm accordingly.

We visited a part of the farm where large fences have been erected to try to stop elephants from bursting through gates and wrapping their trunks around fence posts – he told me in an evening elephants can be known to barge their way through eight or nine fences, leaving a huge clear-up job for his team, but that this is simply one of the variables you have to plan for in Kenya.  

Most people in Kenya are connected to farming, either owning land themselves or a close relative in the sector, which means there is a strong relationship to the land. However, Buzz explained that within the younger generation, most of them aren’t interested in farming and view returning to the farm or pursuing it as a career, as a failure. The phrase I’ve been hearing a lot here is ‘our parents worked hard on the farm to give us an education so we could go on to do better things’. 

There is also quite an obvious distinction here In Kenya between large scale farmers who are often white and small-scale farmers who are black. Generally white people are seen as wealthy and successful farmers who are separate to the rest of the farming fraternity, but Buzz and the team are trying to change this narrative by giving back to local communities through investing in education and health programmes, as well as sharing knowledge and skills to improve local farming practices.

Following a survey in the surrounding area, they asked what more Kisima could do to support local communities and it was found that there was a huge demand for knowledge to improve farming practices, so the team have been holding open days and field trials, to share advice and best practices with local farmers.

I was astounded to learn that aforementioned open days attract around 1500 people – a number we could barely fathom here in the UK and demonstrates both a dearth in knowledge about farming but equally a hunger to learn and improve farming efficiency here in Kenya.

​Kenya is one of the leading suppliers of cut flowers to the UK and I was lucky enough to take a tour around the impressive tunnels and greenhouses of Kisima Flowers and find out more about their production.
 
I spent the afternoon with Floriculture General Manager Craig Oulton, which involved lots of conversations around export markets, certification, carbon, climate change and staff welfare. 
 
Flowers are grown at an altitude of 2400m on the foothills of Mt. Kenya - a perfect climate for large headed premium roses. The main harvest season is between December and May, coinciding with Valentines Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day in Europe, these are the key focus points of the business.
 
There are 30ha of flowers grown in greenhouses and tunnels. 20ha are roses and the other 10ha are a mix of delphiniums, eryngium, alstroemeria and stocks. Most flowers are sold to Aalsmeer in the Netherlands - The world’s largest flower auction.
 
Around 35m flowers are sold by Kisima every year and although traditionally they would be picked and in our sitting rooms in less than three days via air freight, Kisima is now transporting more of their roses by sea, which means they are on the water for between 30 and 45 days. Their flowers are able to last this long due to being dipped into an ethylene gas suppressor before being packed in polythene packets.
 
I was told that switching to sea freight is contributing hugely to reducing their scope three emissions and uses 80% less carbon than air freight.

On the discussion of how the UK can look to increase its own domestic production of flowers and reduce its reliance on imports, I was told that at Kisima they are extremely conscious about their carbon and research they have conducted revealed that the whole process from field to vase uses 50% less carbon than the flowers grown in the UK and Amsterdam, because they use less electricity, heat and CO2 gas