Nickfarm is a dairy business producing milk on daily basis and supplies to Brookside company for processing.
In many dairy farms I have visited in the country, I have not heard any farmer talk of his dream making enough money from cows to build rental houses around their farm or a plan to sell their products in the next town or country, but that’s exactly what can happen when well-intentioned dairy business owner spend time planning the future of their farms
One challenge with business planning is that plans can be written with the best of intentions. In the farms I have visited I have only seen one farm -in Kasarani have a written strategic plan. To be fair to our farms, I have only visited a fraction of farms but the fact that one out of the 20 plus mid/large scale farmers only one has a plan is worrying.
Many middle income families stay in Nairobi or other towns. They have good education and may find it easy to identify great ideas and opportunities in dairy farming. Most of them have access to finance. The challenge is that since their expertise is in other sectors not necessarily dairy, they many not understand how to execute their ideas. The fact that information on dairy sector is still “closed” makes investors to perceive it as high risk
While farmers see processors like Brookside and KCC like enemies that harm profitability and impose prices on dairy farmers, you need to change your thinking from focusing on processors to what you can do differently to grow business. In Kenya the challenge farmers face is scale and cost of production. Presence of established Processors is what makes dairy farming in this country viable-they offer stable market. Think about it, would we have the same outcome with Quails if we had a processor even half powerful than their dairy counterparts? I doubt.
