Simon’s French bean farm

Simon squatting in his field of french beans

Wednesday we visited Simon Kamau’s farm of 9 acres of French beans near Mwea, Kenya. Beautiful! We tasted a couple and they were nice and tender. Yesterday, Friday, they were to harvest again. Simon will hire up to 100 local people for the harvest. They get paid 10 Kenya shillings/kg. A picker can make 500 to 700 ksh/day. At 83 ksh/USD that’s a pretty good daily wage. The harvest lasts all day. Simon explained that at the end of the day the company he agreed to sell them to has a truck at the field to pick collect the beans. From the field the beans are immediately trucked into the night to Nairobi where they are packed in boxes, cooled and put on a plane to Europe. Beans harvested Friday arrive in Europe on Saturday. He also said that first thing in the morning of the harvest he or his cousin, the direct overseer of the farm, will start getting calls from several companies asking if they are harvesting today and bidding on the beans.

French bean

Simon the entrepreneur started with 2 acres of beans earlier this year. He harvested them and poured all his profits back into the expanding the farm to 4 acres Once again upon harvest he put all the profits back into the farm and now has 9 acres of beans.

what a nice field of beans!