How making farming a side hustle saved Mwalimu Maathai’s economy

In the modern world, either you have one job with a high salary or you have more than one job to keep up with the expenses of maintaining a family. Farming is a choice for many in Nakuru, Kenya.

It is worth mentioning that farming as a side hustle doesn’t necessarily mean you have to start exporting your high-quality arborio rice (you can get a packet of those here: riceselect.com/product/arborio). At the same time, when done right and thanks to the information available in the area, farming can become a very profitable secondary job to pay for, say, children’s education. This was the case of Mr. Maathai, let’s see how farming a side hustle saved his economy.

His life prior to farming

Mwalimu Maathai, who is a primary school teacher in Nakuru, has always felt supporting his family as a burden. As a husband and father, one income in the house was not enough, especially since he was a teacher. He got used to looking for new and better opportunities that could free him from this burden by increasing his income. He was always after a better life for him and his family.

The Organic Farmer, a magazine that distributes comprehensive information on more sustainable farming techniques and solutions, provided Mr. Maathai the answers he had been looking for. He found out that farming could become a profitable secondary job, according to a success story he read in the magazine.

How did he start?

The problem with what he wanted to do was that, considering the magazine is designed for farm holders, he could not set his project off as he didn’t have a piece of land to work on. But that problem was easily solved as he turned to the Shamba System.

What is the Shamba System?

This system, practiced in all East Africa but especially Kenya, allows people who don’t hold lands to farm young forests. That is, they can take up a state-owned piece of land in a young forest and grow a crop. In return, the land workers had to care for the trees until they were fully grown and formed a canopy.

How does the land benefit from this? First of all, the inter-cropping generates biodiversity and the forests are well taken care of. This leads to forest preservation at the same time the farming community can meet their needs in terms of both food and money.

However, this particular piece of land Mr. Maathai chose to work with was not good enough. The problem there was that, even if the Shamba system encourages inter-cropping, that is different kinds of crops one next to the other, the crop in that land was always the same. This results in pests among other difficulties, such as the bad weather patterns.

Back to square one to win the game

After failing in its first experiment, Mr Maathai used his research skills to help them improve his farming skills. He was determined to succeed in the project. What he needed was a bit different, he needed assistance in the practical field under the supervision of a trained farmer. And that’s what he did.

He met with the team of the magazine who, in turn, introduced him to another farmer who had been in a similar position and made farming his primary income. But in this case, the solution was fruit farming. His farming colleague, Mr. Wambugu introduced him to tomato farming. What made the difference was the practical approach they took to it. Wambugu showed him and taught him how to successfully grow a tomato tree.

Long story short, not only did he make this a highly profitable job, he is now also devoted to helping other farmers. He built a training site to encourage neighboring farmers to grow high-quality and profitable crops.

Does he sell his yield?

Yes, he does. As he started growing tomato trees, he soon became a supplier of tomatoes for two supermarkets in the area. Moreover, he sells over 100 kg of tomato fruit at his farm every week.

The increased income allowed him to buy more land and he expanded the tomato farming. However, Mawlimu success has to do with much more than the money, it has to do with the fact that sustainable and environmentally friendly practices can also help you progress and it is only through sharing this knowledge that it all makes true sense.