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Sleeping On Gold mines
23rd Oct 07( Published by SMEs Today Magazine -  Oct 2007)

“We own 50 acres of land, all fertile and with a river running right across it,”wrote Betty, a lecturer at a local university. “Interestingly, we have to cross a bridge to access the other side of the farm. But, my spouse and I pay our farm workers from our personal earnings than from sale of farm produce…”

Betty’s is indeed a sad situation that befalls many Kenyan intellectuals and professionals. Many of them, particularly the middle aged, have the queer behavior of acquiring chunks of land as a way of accumulating wealth. This is land they never put into any useful purpose. Interestingly, some of these professionals keep a few symbolic livestock or chicken, just to give them a reason to visit the farms once in a while.

The pastime is to invite friends and relatives over weekends and public holidays to enjoy the serenity of the countryside and “natural farm produce”. Others simply buy land and leave it idle as they await retirement. They too put up some structures for occasional use during Christmas or holidays. There is nothing wrong with these arrangements though, as such pieces of land are private assets and their owners have the right to do with them as they please. However, from an economic sense, there is everything wrong with hoarding a country’s scarce natural resources and letting them lie idle.

It is even more painful when this involves fertile and productive lands which comprise only 25 per cent of the country’s total land mass. What sense does it make when landowners pay from their own pockets to sustain idle farm workers while their energies can be put into productive use? This is indeed unfortunate because unknown to these landowners, they are sleeping on gold mines.

Kenyans had better wake up to the reality that it is at the expense of both personal and national development that land is left idle awaiting its owner’s retirement. As the distance between world markets shrink, demand for farm produce – both food and material for industrial use, raw or processed – is increasing by day. Unfortunately, majority of our farm activities are weather or season driven. When the rain falls, we all cultivate kales, tomatoes or carrots, and come the dry season, we flood the market with mangoes and paw-paws. What’s more, all these products are destined for the same old Marikiti market in Nairobi, if not other open air markets in the countryside.

As economists would say, supply in such situations outstrips demand. Prices for such commodities take a nosedive, and the result is meager earnings for farmers after much effort. Kenyan farmers ought to realize that entrepreneurship is a game of strategy where the sharpest mind wins. Farm business is not exempted from this. While our farmers wait for the rain to fall, their counterparts in Israel and elsewhere in the world are busy using irrigation and other superior farming techniques to grow products aimed at the same market as ours. Surely, it is time we started looking at the greater picture of business. Kenya is endowed with countless competitive advantages over other countries, a fact that we should not take for granted any more. The weather is great and water for irrigation would be abundant if it was harvested and conserved well.

In retrospect, it is just recently that we were busy importing day old chicks from Israel, eggs from South Africa and pigs from Brazil - sabotaging our own economy. Contrary to an embarrassing scenario at a recent exports promotion workshop, Kenyan does not need expatriates to and teach us on what to export and where, at least not in this era of Information Communications Technology (ICT). Rather, it is time local experts took the challenge in charting the way forward for our country’s future in the global economy.

EXPORT BUSINESS
Research indicates that 60 percent of small businesses in Singapore, for example, are export oriented. My bet is that the reverse is more likely the case in Kenya. There is higher probability that more than 60 percent of small businesses in Kenya are import oriented. To confirm this, you only need to count the number of businesses dealing with imported clothes, shoes, mitumba (second hand wares) included. Isn’t this what has killed most of our local industries? If this sort of import orientation in business continues uncontrolled, we shall end up building the economies of other countries while we continue lagging behind.

So, why not turn to our competitive advantage in agriculture and develop export oriented businesses? It is not only Sasini Tea and Coffee, Delmonte of Thika, Floriculture and Horticultural firms that can excel in this field. Small farming businesses too can do. In their own smallness, they can introduce export oriented brands of avocados, mangoes and French beans for the international market.

We must now become proactive in our approach to business, and think outside the national boundaries, if we hope to take advantage of the opportunities arising within the borderless global economy. We should also embrace emerging technologies fully, especially in agricultural production, if we are to benefit from the changing fortunes in international markets.

The writer is a Management and Entrepreneurship Strategist in Nairobi

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