SHE MEANS BUSINESS| 'Farmer on fire': Wangari Kuria's mushrooms venture

Those were my initial thoughts when setting out on the journey to meet Wangari Kuria at her farm in Kitengela.

She had warned me to set out early and “factor in getting lost”, but I hadn’t paid any mind to it until the one hour turned into two and some more minutes before we finally reached the farm, and with the clothes full of dust that has made Kitengela the butt of many dust memes.

However, once we settled in for our She Means Business feature, we got to understand why Wangari goes by the self-styled moniker ‘farmer on fire’.

Wangari seems to always have had an entrepreneurial spirit and knack for exploiting opportunities, moving from mopping up women who were unemployed and starting a domestic workers’ agency to help place them in employment and making money along the way; to forming a cleaning company that offered services to corporate clients.

It is this work that landed her working for a real estate company, selling plots, and in the process snapping up one, which would later become the place she started her farming business, before going ahead to acquire another plot, then another and another as her agribusiness venture expanded.

Wangari says she was only one of the few people living and farming in the location when she got into her business in 2017 and at the time, hyenas would roam freely.

She speaks of using what you have and growing from there to succeed in any venture.

As for her mushroom business, she sees it as a good business that brings in good returns given the price it commands in the market.

“One issue many women face is where to find a market once they have learnt about farming and that discourages many. That is why I formed a community for women farmers to support each other and help market them,” Wangari says.

Wangari, who is big on social media, uses her platforms to market her products and help link other women farmers to markets.

In future, she sees herself venturing into the cosmetics industry, starting a cosmetics line from byproducts of mushrooms, which she says have many skin benefits.

For more on succeeding in agribusiness, watch the full episode of She Means Business.