He sips his drink then starts, "Wahome Iam a serious farmer in Kirinyaga. My farm is modern with borehole and modern irrigation technology. I don’t even mind about implements or cheap fertiliser, I have everything.
I grow onions in large scale. The next question is where to sell. I hire a lorry to deliver my produce to Marikiti in Nairobi. I get there very early at 5am.
When retailer’s in the market spot the lorry lorry see my product, they immediately refer me to Joseph (not a real name). Joseph is the sole broker of onions in the market.
Not a single retailer can dare touch my onions, only Joseph. And its Joseph who will call the price of onion for the day.
Joseph comes and sets the price say at 200 per net. And he can’t change, its the price for the day. He won’t bargain. If you won’t sell the price at that, move your lorry from here.
Now the lorry owner has started getting impatient, he wants to offload and go. So I decide to sell to Joseph at the 200.
Immediately we agree on that, Joseph calls the retailers to offload the onion from the lorry. At its 500 per net for the retailers no bargain.
By the time the lorry is empty Joseph has made 300bob per net, clean. Hana shamba, hana lorry na hana stall. He doesn’t know how onions are.planted and grown…
He does that for 10 lorries and by 11am he is taking JD in South B, having made the kill. By the time the onions are getting to you for consumption what you would have bought at 300, is 600bob.
Wahome Iam talking from experience.
Almost the same exact thing happened to me ! had to sell atleat at 60 ksh to turn a profit , kufika marikiti nambiwa 25ksh , alafu tz came and flooded the market with 23ksh per KG , agri in kenya ni school of hard knocks, luckily unlike tomatoes I was able to store and sell per 10 kg mpaka zika isha !
Don’t get me statrted on trying to get subsidized fertilizer from govt , you have to go to the chief andkie barua you go to the depo to make sure iko, they give an invoice you line up KCB or Coop bank , take back to the warehouse ndio upate fertilizer yako, you can go for a week kila time unambiwa chief hayuko !!!
Brokers are scum of earth. Anyway, cant blame a man for trying. J blame Kenyans for their extreme meek nature. You cannot be an entire whole of you with lorries na mnaacha one douche called Joseph awacontrol.
It is capitalism. It is a free market. Do those brokers use violence to force you to sell via them? If so, the farmers should man up! Otherwise, stop bitching and play dirty as well.
So quick to disparage the western world but very eager to adopt their practices. Africans hatukua this greedy before colonialists came, capitalism, or at least some negative aspects of it, should be cut off. Na juu umesema play dirty as well, mimi nikikua farmer I will make sure I spot the broker from a distance them crush him with a lorry.
I know of such ‘josephs’ in the matatu biz in the flower biz people who control prices and stages and yet they dont have mats/flowers…hao ndio unaskianga he was shot 50times aki ngojea gate yake ifunguliwe…thats the only way to deal with them…jamaa yuko na connections kanjo traffic dept kra anajuana na wasee wa pale kiambu road …to entrenched to by pass akiwa alive:cool:
I used to get viazi from Sekutiek Narok… Naleta marikiti… Mungiki broker… Ana kuja… Ana chukua lorry… Ana uza… Ana kuletea pesa yako… Hio time ameuza double your price…
We have so many Joseph in every sector of our economy. It’s only that many people resonate well with the agriculture sector. The Josephs are the face of cartels and untouchable. Hata biashara ya matatu skuizi huwezi fanya Kama hujaongea na OCS kando na ulipe leader of a extortion gang around your area
io sio ukweli. brokers wako na kazi yao, kazi muhimu. otherwise ao retailers wangechukua number ya Joseph akuwe anawa supply na 200 nje ya soko badala wachukue kwa Joseph na 500.
Kila mtu afanye kazi yake bila kublame mtu mwengine.
Don’t be naive !!! jaribu u park hapo na bei yako , uta rudi home maiti na FH yako a burntout shell , they are not called cartels for nothing ! they call the shots !
Brokers are everywhere, so it upon the farmers to create their own system and by-pass brokers.
Selling farm produce, brokers wako
Selling land, brokers wako
Selling your car, brokers wako
Juzi nimekuwa ocha and I decided to sell two bulls. I needed some liquid cash and it would have helped to reduce overstocking kwa shamba. I called a well known cattle broker in my village na ghaseer after looking at the bulls akasema he can give me a maximum of 25k for each. Hiyo nugu nikamwambia akwende and decided to look for direct market. Nikapiga simu hapa na pale. I ended up fetching 38k for one and 35k for another.
Sometimes people will use brokers for convenience… for example in village market days it’s mostly brokers selling livestock. But just before schools reopen you’ll find the actual owners there selling to raise fees
Ironically free markets is closer to the African way than the western way. It was plain negotiation and barter between buyer and seller in the market. Centralized price control is a product of Westernized economies
Brokers can smell desperation from a mile away. Wakiona unataka pesa haraka or your farm produce itaharibika if not sold immediately, ole wako. They will capitalize on that.
Anyway, they come in handy if you want to liquidate haraka eg emergency cases. Juu they got good market network. But in most cases you will lose upto even 40% of the actual value.