Japhet Muthami

Having grown up in a farming family, Japhet loved farming since he was a boy. After highschool, however, Japheth moved to Nairobi to support himself and his family as a hotelier but ultimately made the decision to farm full-time. 

Japhet spent 6-8 hours per day collecting water manually and yet produced very little yield. He tried using a hand pump and a traditional generator, but these options either didn’t provide enough water or were so expensive that he found he was losing money. 

Japheth came across SunCulture after looking online for irrigation solutions, and then visited a demo site. He has been irrigating his farm with SunCulture’s ClimateSmart Battery plus RainMaker2 system for about a year, and then bought additional units to irrigate different areas of his farm, including SunCulture’s ClimateSmart Direct plus RainMaker2  and Direct Drip units. 

He initially just planned to add a few other vegetables to his farm but decided to add oranges, mangoes, bananas, guava, and papaya to his farm after he realized that the SunCulture system provided more than enough water to support all these crops. 

He has since tripled his monthly income from 12,000 to 37,000-40,000 KES per month and can continue harvesting during the dry season. He’s taken advantage of SunCulture’s Pay-As-You-Grow financing option, allowing him to pay small monthly installments, since he has completed payments ahead of time he currently pays 3,100 KES per month. On top of the high yields and increased income, this is the first time Japheth has electricity in his home. 

He advises existing farmers to “get the system because it will make farming easy.” When asked if there is anything he’d like SunCulture to know, he responded, “SunCulture, kudos. You have really helped me. God bless.”