SMART FARM | Urban Sugarcane Farming
Kennedy Ongaro is a lecturer by profession.
If he's not serving as a dean at Deister University,
you will find him wearing a different hat back at home,
that of a sugarcane farmer. Together with his wife Zippora,
they practice sugarcane farming at their home in Nairobi's Ngara estate.
2014, I went to accompany my in-law for a funeral and when we were back
from the funeral around Tikka town, we found these particular women near a
petrol station who were sharing sugarcane and therefore
in that particular aspect, I actually requested them
to give me the remains, the top part of it,
which I actually planted behind me. But the couple's startup challenge was space
as their venture was right at the heart of the city.
Ongaro made the most of the space he had at his homestead,
at his backyard and close to the main entrance.
Hungry for more, he approached his neighbours who allowed him to turn some
of the neglected spaces in their neighbourhood into farms.
The areas where we used to have a lot of dumping, a lot of garbage,
I started transforming it by planting sugarcane.
Today, the couple boasts of cane plantation nearing
a quarter of an acre. Ongaro cultivates a variety known as
which can grow to a maximum of 17 metres in height.
In this particular area where we are, the nature of soil is cotton soil and
that's why you can see it doing so well and it is an all
wetter condition type of sugarcane. We don't water
the sugarcane, we just plant and that's it.
Because I think it's kind of swampy, the area geographically, so we don't,
it doesn't need so much attention. Although the cane takes
a year, four months to mature, it has a high sugar content.
Ongaro has his cane in different stages and harvests every week.
After planting sugarcane for three years, Ongaro decided to take his farming
a notch higher. So what did he do? He procured
this machine from abroad and began making sugarcane juice,
a decision he has never regretted up to date.
The sugarcane crushing machine was a game changer for Ongaro,
easing the juice extraction process.
First, the cane covering is removed, chopped
into sizable portions, washed to remove impurities
and then finally crushed. Ongaro mixes the juice with ginger
and lime to enhance its taste and medicinal properties.
A liter of sugarcane juice, what you need is 30 seconds
to produce. With the machine that I have, you need
30 seconds, maximum one minute. It will now depend on the
the type of sugarcane you have in terms of the
the size of the sugarcane. I didn't used to take
sugarcane juice and now I have like four glasses in a day and the benefits
from weight loss to management of blood sugar levels in the body,
BP issues. A sugarcane piece such as this one can produce up to three liters of
juice. Ongaro produces an average of 50 liters
of juice daily. We sell sugarcane juice in terms of
milliliters. Now the 300 ml, it goes for 150 shillings, it goes out 400 shillings
but my desire is one, I want to transform the lives of the youths,
those who are in schools, those who are in universities and they have no money.
As he seeks to empower the rest of the community, Ongaro looks forward to sunny
days because this is when his sugarcane juice
business thrives most.
Dennis Otieno, Smart Farm.