Mushroom farming lifting rural group out of biting poverty

When a group of 15 villagers from Emusala in Kakamega County came together 14 years ago to raise some money from planting mushrooms, their neighbours casually wrote off them off.

But undaunted by the challenges of poverty and pessimism surrounding them, members of the group stuck to their dream and sacrificed the energy and time to crystalize the idea.

Through tilling on their neighbours’ farms, the group members set up an investment group (chama) in 2002 and later the Millennium Mushrooms for Life, an environment conservation group.

In 2010, this initiative got a Sh50,000 loan from the Women Enterprise Fund, money they used to set up the mushroom farm. Four years later, the group applied for another Sh100,000 loan to expand the project.

Casual labourers

“We started off by planting vegetables in our tiny gardens but then an idea struck us to try out mushroom farming,” Victoria Mbelesia, the group’s chairperson, told Enterprise.

“Before we started the mushroom project life was tough. We worked as casual labourers to raise money to buy food for our families,” Ms Mbelesia said.

The group has eight huts in which they grow the mushrooms. The mud-walled semi-permanent structures are thatched using a special type of grass to control temperature. Construction and equipping the structures cost between Sh30,000 and Sh40,000.

The huts have been built in the homes of members. The group uses bagasse, a waste product of sugarcane, to grow the mushrooms. The bagasse is mixed with supplements to form a substrate that improves production.

Apart from bagasse, the group uses dry maize stocks, wheat straws and saw dust as material for the substrate. The group collects bagasse dumped in open fields by sugar millers for use in preparing the substrate.

The eight huts produce up to seven tonnes of mushrooms per growing cycle (three months). Mr Charles Omanyi, a member of the group, supervises preparation before the start of planting mushroom seeds (spawns) to avoid contamination which ruins production.

“It is important to ensure no contamination takes place during the involving process of planting spawns in the substrate packed in tiny plastic paper bags and placed on wooden shelves,” explained Mr Omanyi.

Twenty kilogrammes of spawn is planted in each of the huts. It takes between 21 to 28 days for the crop to mature. The harvesting stage lasts for over three months.

“We are able to harvest up to 10 kilogrammes of mushrooms from one hut. The mushroom is then dried and packaged for selling within the village and Kakamega town,” said Mr Omanyi. A kilo of the dry mushrooms costs Sh2,000.

The group earns about Sh30,000 per harvest from each of the huts. In May this year, the group beat 90 applicants to receive Sh1 million Netfund Green Innovations Award.

The group won the cash for embracing environmental conservation through the mushroom farming project.