8 Amazing steps for Achieving Sustainable Agriculture Dream in Kenya

Welcome to 8 amazing steps for achieving  sustainable agriculture business listed down and explained.

AGRIBUSINESS PLAN DEVELOPMENT: Business plan development is crucial for success of any sustainable agriculture dream. A business plan is a document that supports an enterprise to plan growth, seek funding, and monitor performance over a period of time. An agribusiness plan is the road-map to a success in agribusiness.

THE SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE DREAM: Your dream is the most important thing in agribusiness success. The dream shows where you are going and how you want your agribusiness to be in future. Write down the dream in details in order to remain clear and focused as you work on your agribusiness idea.

BE ORIGINAL/ BE UNIQUE: Your agribusiness must be a solution to an existing human problem or need for it to succeed, and not a mere imitation. Take care and identify gaps to address and to avoid desperately looking for market the last minute for your goods and services, common with starters in Agribusiness. Every human problem is a business opportunity. Business opportunities are as many as human problems. Be unique.

EXPECT TOUGH TIMES: There are times when things get tough in every business and agribusiness is no exception. Focusing on the dream will keep you going when things get tough as you wait for better times. The dream will drive your passion and motivate you to act to achieve it. Remain clear about your sustainable agriculture dream and stay focused on achieving your idea.

BREAK DOWN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE DREAM into manageable portions. Being overambitious will lead to frustration and discouragement. Write down 5-10 things you need to do in order to realize your sustainable agriculture dream, and they must be simple, measurable (Quantify to enable monitoring of progress) achievable within your resources and abilities, setting a time deadline for each.

TARGET CUSTOMERS: Find out who’ll be your target customers (e.g. households, hotels, processors, Schools, hospitals etc) what product/ service they need and of what quality.
COMPETITORS: Find out who’ll be your competitors their strengths and weaknesses. Take advantage of their weaknesses by offering what they are not offering the customer.

PREPARE EXPECTED INCOME AND EXPENDITURE BUDGET for your sustainable agriculture dreams, and determines how long it will take to recover the capital invested.

FINANCE: Lastly decide where money will come from and how much you will need for implementation of your sustainable agriculture dream.

Pure Breakfast Soya Drink With Delicious Creamy Taste

Soya is a wonder bean with more than 360 uses. It contains all the nutrients that the human body requires despite being a plant. The wonder bean has double the amount of protein Found in beef. It has protein of high biological value with all the essential amino acids. This means the protein is naturally  used effectively by the body. 

The farmers can process the crop into delicious creamy soya drink, milk, meat, yoghurt, oil, flour, snacks and the list is endless.Breakfast is no longer a headache with emergence of our product-Visit: http://kariokor.olx.co.ke/njagu-pure-soya-drink-whole-sale-retail-iid-446474407

Farmers Training session

This delicious natural product is made from the wonder Soya beans, grown and processed by Njagu farmers group from  Kiambu County in Kenya. The pure breakfast drink is delicious, creamy in taste, and caffeine free. 

1. You can buy this  pure delicious creamy breakfast  drink for sale and home consumption at wholesale and retail price from kes 180 only. Call Mr Mungai on 0735 330 647 for more information. 
2.  You can sell your natural Soya crop to our processing plant at good prizes. 
3.  We train other farmers how to grow and process Soya beans.
4. Join the wonder bean move and improve livelihoods naturally.  

Steps of starting a farm business

When starting a farm business you need to make up your mind where to begin! Starting a business can be overwhelming as it involves several steps. Start by evaluating the Business Idea using market research. You may think your business idea is genius just because there’s nothing like it in the market , but on the contrary it may be a warning sign that there simply no market for the idea. Before rushing into starting your farm business, you should ensure there are enough customers whom you are targeting will buy your farm products or services. The more you know about your consumers, the better the chances of success of your marketing efforts. This exercise is called market research. 

There are several ideas to help you in the above research. You can hire market research companies or do simple research using the following considerations? Who are your target customers are, their numbers, where they live, their ages, how much money they spend on comparable services / products per week, whom you are competing with, What will make your farm business unique? Make a business plan in order to know how much sales you require to break even and make a profit. The market research will help you determine whether your idea is practical and worthwhile pursuing or not.

A partnership farm business requires a wise choice of co-founders whom you can work well with, whose skills complement yours. Choosing business partners who have a variety of skills is the key to success of a starting a business. This means if you are good at customer service but disorganized when it comes to administration, get a person who is organized with great attention to details for administrative work, while you deal with customer service. Choosing farm Business Structure is the next step. Once your idea is past the market research step, and you’ve decided whether to have co-founders or not, decide on the type of business structure best for your company. If ideally research shows that there is  no need for retail establishment, and you decide execution of your idea is to start from  a home office, you may be able to operate  a sole proprietorship.In this case Choose a private company business structure. However if you have co-founders, consider other forms of Farm business structures, such as partnerships,  a Corporation or a Limited Liability Corporation.

Marketing of Agribusiness Products in Kenya

Farmers being trained on Marketing

Marketing is everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of your customers, which includes diverse disciplines like sales, public relations, pricing, packaging, and distribution. It is the most important part of farming business because it justifies the decision to produce and remain in a particular enterprise. Marketing plans must be based upon the goals laid out in the agribusiness plan, therefore a thorough review and understanding of the plan is the first step in created a marketing plan. The six most important marketing strategies commonly referred to as the six Ps of marketing include:

1. People-Identify people who need and can afford to pay for your product. Who are your customers? What do they need? When do they need it? Marketing is all about finding the right people to persuade to buy your product/service, therefore take time at the initial stages to discover who your potential customers are, and how to effectively reach them.

If you do not start by keeping people in the frontline you are bound to fail because marketing plans are designs of ways to effectively communicate with people.

2. Product / service-Identify the product or service which you will deal with.

How is the availability of complimentary products in the market? What is the demand of the product?

People buy a product as well as the concept of what the product will do for them, or help them do for themselves e.g.  People who are overweight will buy the concept of a new, slim, happy and successful self.

3. Price-The price you charge must be competitive but still allow you to make a reasonable profit taking into consideration how much the consumer is willing to pay for the product.

4. Place- This refers to the geographical area and it may include warehousing, shipping, middlemen etc

How big is your market? How can you expand your market? How accessible is your market?

5. Promotion-How will people know of your product?

Promotion involves influencing people through advertising to buy your product. All products need promotion either to introduce them into the market or increase their demand. This can be achieved through the use of media, posters, signboards, free samples, leaflets, personal and family contacts and sales incentives .However the best form of promotion is a reputation for high quality products, friendly services, fair prices and good management. Recommendation by satisfied customers is the cheapest form of promotion.

6. Packaging-Packaging plays an important role in marketing of food products as follows:

• Protection of the food products against deterioration
• Encourages a customer to prefer the product to the other products on retailer’s shelf
• Tells potential customers about the product

Therefore it is worthwhile making effort to have the best packaging and labeling affordable.

Labeling-Labels must give information about the company and the product as follows:

·        The name of the product

·        The net weight

·        The ingredients in order of the amounts

·        The name and address of the manufacturer or producer

·        The brand name

Distribution and Selling-Transport, distribution and marketing costs are often a major expense to businesses. It is important to always avail products to customers where they wish to buy them from, when they need to buy them. The entrepreneur has to ensure a distribution system that will deliver the product for the customer to get it on time and in the right condition as economically as possible. For more information Visit this marketing LINK -http://mfarm.co.ke/  . 

How to Write a farming business Plan

A farming business plan refers to a written document describing the business goals and the strategies for achieving them, financial background and projected profit and loss statement. It may also contain background information about the farming business and the team working to reach the goals. These working tools can help the farming business owners plan for the future and request for credits.  Below are simple steps to guide youth entrepreneurs in making farming business plans.

1) Introduction: what is the product of your farming business? What human problems will be addressed by the farming business? Who are your customers?

2) Basic information or background information: This includes the name and the address of the business, name of the business owner, workers and their qualification.

3) Describe the product: Give details of raw materials, the production process, quality control checks, packaging and special features of your product.

4) Describe the market: who are your customers? Where are they? How big is the market both in size and value? Is the demand growing or falling? Who are the competitors and what will they do if you start production? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What is the value of the market in a year? What is your market share?

5) Describe the selling plan: How will you distribute and sell your products? What promotion method will you use? What are your competitors doing? What will be the product cost? Why do you think your method will be successful?

6) Describe the premises/equipments needed: where will the farming business be located and why? What sort of building will you use? Does it meet health and hygiene standards? What services and equipments do you need and how much do they cost? (Include storage and distribution).

Premises for food processing should be rat/insect proof, fitted with ceiling, easy to clean and spacious to allow walking with ease. The building should have a supply of clean water in addition to power and fuel supply where needed, waste disposal system, enough space for production processes, storage of raw materials, packaging materials and finished products. In addition the equipment should be the correct size for the intended scale of production and regular maintenance and cleaning schedule should be designed and followed.

7) Describe the finance needed: how much money will you need to start and operate the farming business for one year? How much money do you have and how much loan do you need?

Start-up capital is the total cost involved in buying or renovating a building, buying equipments, registering the farming business, training workers, buying packaging and initial raw materials. Operating cost includes variable and fixed costs which should be calculated in advance using an assumed scale of production from the share of market demand.

8) Describe your future plans: what are your objectives in running the farming business? How will you achieve them? What do you expect to happen over the next three to five years? (Include cash flow forecast)