Kenyan farmer Mugambi Kathuni is determined to pay for his children’s schooling with his own income within five years instead of depending on the unreliable government-supported grant program. The goal feels a long way off.
Kathuni grows a mix of crops such as maize, beans, avocados, and the lucrative cash crop of coffee. But in the past few years, low rainfall has left him struggling with declining harvests. Now, he has a new problem to cope with: soaring fertilizer prices.
Until recently he used a chemical fertilizer to boost yields at his three-acre farm, which is often degraded by soil erosion. But the price of a sack of fertilizer has now tripled from about 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($17) per 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag last year to a high of 7,000 Kenyan shillings in August, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He simply can’t afford that, he said.