Meet the Meru farmer who sold 150 pigs in a day and took home Sh2.8m

By  Wanja Mbuthia

Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

• Kendi Mwenda started with three pigs fed on catering leftovers and has built a thriving farm earning millions from livestock.
• The Meru farmer uses food waste, homegrown feed and pig manure to cut costs and create a sustainable farming enterprise.

Rebeka Kendi Mwenda steps out of her Toyota Probox car. Her farm welcomes her the way it always does. Peacocks squawk, Ayam Cemani chickens cluck, and pigs snort somewhere nearby. This is home for the woman many know simply as Kendijoy.

She is just from the market when Nation catches up with her. “I hope I didn't keep you long; I am just from the slaughterhouse where I have sold 70 pigs,” she says as she joyfully greets us.

Kendi is the founder of Aroma Farm in Naari, Meru County. Aroma Farm sits on a quarter acre of land, though she plans to expand. The farm has a wide range of ornamental birds, fish and pigs, and it gives the perfect bucolic feel.

But this success story did not start with peacocks or fancy chickens. It started with a simple idea about waste. Kendi is a caterer by profession and has been in the business for the past 10 years. She runs Kendijoy Solutions, an outside catering company. About six years ago, four years after being in the catering business, she noticed something that many would consider a problem.

“I would be left with a lot of leftovers after the events. From vegetable and fruit peels to cooked food and all the in between, there was always something to discard,” she reminisces.

Instead of throwing the waste away, she decided to put it to use. She bought three pigs to feed on the leftovers. That small decision would change everything. Within a year, the three pigs had multiplied into many more.

“When I started with the three pigs, it was solely for the purpose of managing waste. But pigs reproduce very fast, and they give birth to many piglets in one go.”

Two years later, she had more than 30 pigs in her compound. She kept selling and slaughtering them for her catering events, and they kept reproducing. Within no time, the pigs were not just consuming waste; they were fast becoming a profitable business on their own. But the innovation did not stop there.

Kendi now uses biogas from the pig waste to cook for her catering business. The waste from the pigs goes back into the kitchen, creating a sustainable system where nothing is wasted. “I've been using biogas in a good way,” she says.

As her catering business grew, so did the demand for pork. She needed to expand. The biggest challenge was space. The catering business premises were too cramped; the kitchen, the hostels and the pigs could not all fit. She had to look for somewhere else to take the pigs. That is how Aroma Farm was born. She relocated the pigs to Naari in July last year, starting with about 70 of the animals.

Space was not the only challenge. The cost of animal feed has been a major issue for many farmers across the country, but she found a way around it. “The problem with animal farming is that their feeds are very costly,” she says with a distant gaze.

With this realisation, she planted maize and sunflower on several farms that she owns with her husband. She harvests and mills them using her own machines, then buys other supplements like wheat bran and comfortably feeds her pigs. This has helped her cut feed costs by half.

Today, Aroma Farm has 282 pigs. And they multiply fast. “One good mother will give you between 12 and 15 piglets in one go. And remember, the gestation period for a pig is 114 days: three months, three weeks and three days, so that means a pig can give birth twice a year. Now imagine you have 10 good mothers. Currently I have about 30 good mothers. Last month, there was a time we had 100 piglets in just two days,” she notes proudly.

The business is booming, and she sells to anyone interested—farmers who want pregnant sows, those who want piglets, and those who want to slaughter. In a good month, she makes around Sh600,000 in profit from pigs alone. But her biggest paydays come from single, bulk sales. “One day you wake up and sell 200, and you get around four million,” she says.

The smallest pig for slaughter goes for about Sh20,000, so a sale of 200 can fetch close to Sh4 million. Last year, she made her biggest sum in a day. She sold 150 pigs and walked away with Sh2.8 million in cash. “It was a surreal feeling. As of now, the returns from pig farming are bigger than from my catering business. This is my main source of income now.”

After moving the pigs to Naari and settling them, Kendi realised her staff had some free time. “Pigs are only fed in the mornings and evenings; it is also the same time that their pigsties are cleaned. So my farmhand has a lot of free time, and I decided to keep them busy by starting a new project: ornamental birds.”

She started early this year and now has 18 different species. These include peacocks, crested cranes, bantam chickens, guinea fowls, turkeys, geese, parrots and eight different types of doves. But getting into ornamental birds has not been easy. “You must have a network. There are many farmers in Kenya and others out of the country. So, we have a lot of networking.”

Genuine birds are hard to come by, as many farmers sell fakes. “Someone tells you there is a pure this or that. You buy it at Sh70,000 per bird, and by the time it comes, it is nothing even close to the real thing. So what I do most of the time, I go to the farms myself to supervise before buying. Before I got the real ones, I had a lot of fake ones,” she explains.

Not all farmers vaccinate their birds either, which makes them delicate and she has suffered losses because of this. “When I started, I remember the first time I went out with Sh500,000 to buy the birds. And half of those died. But as a farmer, you must have a thick skin. I didn't give up and I went again. But now I am doing well. I know where to get them, which farms to give the originals. I plan to expand this venture and start selling them as well,” she says.

“For licensing, it is not a major struggle. Only a few species like guinea fowls and foreign birds require licences from the Kenya Wildlife Service. The rest are domesticated and do not need special permits.”

Kendi does not stop at pigs and ornamental birds. She also keeps around 300 chickens, mostly the local kienyeji breed, and lets them roam on the farm. A few broilers share the space too. She has since ventured into fish farming, rearing mud fish and catfish for sale. Eight permanent workers run the farm with her, and she brings in casuals daily, depending on how much work needs doing.

Kendi has observed a significant shift in what Kenyans are eating. “We sell pork more than anything else, more than chicken,” she says.

When she was growing up, pork was not very popular. But that has changed. “I don't know if the cost of beef has gone very high or people have just diversified to something different. But it sells a lot. In every event where I have pork, you realise there are a lot of pork lovers. I think I can confidently say that you can never go wrong with pig-farming,” she says.

There is a common stereotype that pigs are dirty animals. But a visit to Aroma Farm tells a different story. “People come here and think it is a school hostel or something. Because of the structuring, yes, but also because there is not that strong a stench as expected. There are no flies all over the place. Pigs are very clean animals, and they thrive in clean spaces,” Kendi says.

Her next big project is to buy a feed mixer. She already has a pellet machine and other equipment. With a mixer, she can produce her own feeds for her own consumption and also sell to other farmers.

"I want to look for a mixer whereby I can produce my own feeds for my own production and to sell also. I have a lot of raw materials, and I want to pack my own feeds," she says.

The idea is to create a one-stop shop. When farmers come to buy piglets from her, they can also buy feed. When they come for chickens, the same.

She does not plan to open another farm elsewhere. She has enough space to extend where she is, and plans to add an eatery where people can come, have their animals slaughtered and eat. For a woman who started with three pigs and a pile of leftovers, the Toyota Probox now carries her from one milestone to the next.