Market & Field
Commodity prices, fertiliser and pest pressure in Kenya, from market data and sensor readings rather than press releases.
Gross margin per acre: how to work it out before planting
A Kenyan French bean budget gives every line you need: 600 to 1,000 cartons an acre, a farm-gate price, a variable cost total and the hours of work. The shillings are old; the sum still works with this season's quotes.
Farm labour costs in Kenya: what a day's work costs
No reliable Kenyan table of day rates exists for planting, weeding, spraying or harvest, so you build your own from what you last paid. A fair contractor quote sits 20 to 40 percent above the operator's running cost.
Land lease per acre in Kenya: what a fair rent looks like
No traceable table gives a Kenyan rent per acre, so the figure has to come off your own plot: average yield times a price you can really get, run over five seasons or more, with rent kept to a slice of the worst of them.
Joining a cooperative: what it costs and what it gets you
Only one of the three money lines on the joining form can ever come back to you.
Crop insurance in Kenya: what a policy pays and costs
A rainfall index pays on a gauge that is probably not on your farm: across 10 stations in Kenya, one month's rainfall ran from 0.0 mm to 75.3 mm. A yield policy pays only after a crop cutting agent samples your field.
Contract farming: what the contract should say before you sign
The field officer brings one page, a seed pack and a spoken price. The advance terms, input prices and order of deductions sit in an attachment nobody hands over. Ask for it, work out your net figure, and compare it with last season's county price.
Fertiliser prices this season: DAP, CAN and urea per bag
A 50 kg bag of DAP sits at Ksh 3,500 on the approved depot list and Ksh 6,400 as a planning cost outside it. Here is what each figure measures, how to compare three quotes, and the grain it takes to break even.
Organo-mineral fertiliser in Kenya: what the bag contains and costs
A blended bag carries less mineral nutrient per kilogram, and the drying and pelleting sit inside its price. One greenhouse wheat trial found no yield difference between sources, and 95% of summit participants said they would not pay mineral-bag prices for a blend.
Buying inputs on credit: what the terms really cost
Hardly any seller or lender in Kenya will name a rate. This piece shows how to turn each offer into shillings for one acre and one season, and what to do when a line in the terms stays blank.
Why the same bag costs more at your agrovet than the next one
Kenya has around 9,000 agro-veterinary retailers, each pricing on its own terms, so gaps between counters are normal. Four things decide whether the cheaper shop is truly cheaper for you, and a simple monthly record tells you if the gap is real.
What transport to market costs per bag
There is no single shilling figure, because the bill is a stack of separate charges. Work through each one with real quotes from your own route, then divide by the bags on the trip and watch where the curve flattens.
When to sell your maize, not when to plant it
When researchers paid Kenyan maize traders a subsidy per bag, only 22.4 percent of it reached the price offered to sellers. That is the market your held crop has to beat.