thPassionfruit earnings are very sweet.

Once your passion plants start yielding fruit, you’ll be collecting cash week after week…

It’s a money-making opportunity for anyone interested in fruit production.

However, every opportunity—including passion fruit farming—comes with a risk.

That’s why I write this post.

I want to explain ALL the facts on passion fruit farming in Kenya, its challenges, and opportunities.

Hopefully, by the end of the reading this post, you can make an informed judgment about passion fruit payouts in Kenya.

Related: Download free passion fruit guide here

Passion fruit farming in Kenya: Is It a lucrative business opportunity?

Yes.

Let me explain:

When you are evaluating whether to grow passion, you’ll have this question:

“Will this crop be profitable?”

Well, some time ago, I went through some of the online information on passion fruit farming.

After going through it, I realized that online blogs don’t give the whole story.

To say the least, the online publications on passion farming are one-sided.

They only state the “vanity side of passion fruit production” while disregarding the reality side of passion farming.

You’ll often hear of the loads of money farmers earn from passion fruit farming.

While there is nothing wrong with those stories, nevertheless, they are inaccurate.

They oversimplify the work that a passion farmer must do before he or she earns a profit.

I am saying this because behind every success story; there’s often a challenge and a struggle.

Therefore, If anyone is to provide information on passion growing profits, he or she must also discuss the problems of the sector.

By doing that, the stories will be balanced and thus more accurate.

Any information giving one side, while disregarding the other is not real.

It’s designed to lure people into passion farming without them getting a clear picture of the risks and financial benefits involved.

People new to passion fruit production or horticultural production, relying on one-sided information, can make costly mistakes that are difficult to recover.

I am saying this, because in my ten years as a horticulturist, I have seen people make huge losses as a result of the wrong information.

On the other hand, I have witnessed people making tons of money from passion farming because they relied on accurate information.

That said if you want to make a good return in passion farming, base your decisions on sound advice from experienced horticulturists. Nothing else.

By reading this post, you will:

• Get a clear picture of what you need to do, so that takes the guesswork out of in passion fruit farming.
• Be prepared both financially and psychologically so that once you start with passion fruit farming, you don’t have to face unpleasant costly surprises.
• Understand that passion fruits earnings aren’t about the price offered by the market for a certain number of kilos of fruit. It involves many more factors that you should carefully consider.

Ready?

Let’s get started, and you’ll get the answers on whether huge passion fruit incomes are real or not.

Factors that will determine your passion earnings

Step 1: Know why do you want to grow passion fruit

If you want to grow passion fruits in your backyard, for your own consumption, that’s fine.

That is because you’ll have lots of room to experiment and make mistakes.

However, when your motive is profit, you don’t have room for errors.

Every decision you make should be strategic if you want to get profit.

It should increase your odds of getting profits from passion fruits.

Step 2: Land ownership

When it comes to any passionfruit production, land ownership is crucial.

Without suitable land for growing your fruits, you can’t head anywhere. You won’t have a moneymaking passion business at all.

If you own land, the better for you. Besides not having to pay land rent, you’ll have the freedom to do whatever you want on the property because you own it.

What if I don’t own land? Does this mean you’ve lost it all?

Not at all.

You have the option of leasing land.

Finding land to lease in Kenya is not difficult nor expensive.

Once you sort this huddle, you’ll need to get to the next step.

Step 3: Get ready for passion fruit production

Passion fruit production is not like maize or bean farming where you till your land, sow the seeds, then wait for them to germinate.

It involves much more.

You’ll have to:

• Sow your seeds in a nursery.
• Allow them to germinate in 15 to 20 days.
• Transplant the plantlets in polythene tubes filled with a mixture of soil and manure.
• Water them regularly until they grow to a height of 15 cm to 20 cm.
• Trellis your land
• Once the land is trellised, and the seedlings are 15 cm to 20 cm tall, transplant them to the open field.
• Give your passion fruits suitable fertilizers
• Irrigate your passion plants regularly
• Control pests and diseases on your passion plants
• Wait for 6-8 months before your first harvest

All these operations have an impact on the passion fruit earnings you’ll get.

Step 4: Manage your passion fruit farm efficiently.

To get maximum returns from your passion farm, you must manage it efficiently.

By doing so, you’ll:

• Increase in average yield per plant
• Produce high-quality fruits that would be able to sell above the average market price.
• Negotiate for higher prices with passion fruit buyers
• Get extra income from farm visits by people interested in passion fruit farming

Since passion fruit management is VITAL, download this comprehensive passion fruit guide to get all the details.

Step 5: Increase the revenue streams of your passionfruit farm

When you grow passion fruit, there is a lot of space that remains between one row to another.

Experts recommend spacing passion at a distance of 6 meters between rows and 5 meters within rows.

This spacing is large enough for it to generate extra income for your passion business.

To maximize your passion for farm returns, you can intercrop passion fruit with other crops.

Suitable intercropping crops include desmodium, beans, groundnuts, or watermelon.

The intercropping passion with any of these crops can increase your passion for earnings by up to 30%.

Some of these intercrops will not only generate more revenue for you but also improve the soil fertility of your passion farm.

For instance, Desmodium happens to be an excellent cover of the soil, and nitrogen-fixing plant.

Intercropping it with your passion fruit can reduce the weeding operations as well as provide income as a fodder crop.

Beans and groundnuts also fix nitrogen though they are not excellent ground covers as desmodium.

Another strategy to increase income is by promoting agro-tourism.

When you become an expert passion grower, you are bound to attract people and students eager to visit your farm. You can charge a small entry fee for these visits. These farm visits will give you revenue like no other.

So how do you attract agro-tourists to your passion farm?

To benefit from this agro-tourism income boosting strategy, you have to become an expert in passion fruit production. Your crops have to produce high yields perhaps above the national average.

Second, you have to keep good records of all your farm operations and their cost.

Third, you’ll have to photograph all the stages of your crop from transplanting, weeding, spraying, flowering to harvesting. Photos are important because they will show the growth journey of your passion farm.

Print the photos into banners, or use the suitable audio-visual equipment. You’ll use the images to explain to the tourists a stage that they may have missed.

Let me explain.

Suppose a tourist visits your passion farm when the fruits are at the flowering stage. If you have the photos of the other steps, you’ll easily explain to the tourist how your farm got there.

Other factors that determine passion fruit earnings

Besides the cost of farm inputs, management, irrigation, and land preparation, other factors will affect your passion fruit revenues.

Depending on where you are at the passion fruit production chain, whom you sell to can significantly determine your earnings.

Your target customer will determine whether you are in Buyers-market or sellers-market.

If you are relying on passion fruit brokers to buy your product, then you are in the buyers market. You lack control of the prices.

When you are the buyers market is offering as the buying price is what you get. You have no control over the amount you get.

If you sell directly to users say to fruit processors, or you process the fruit yourself, you are in the seller’s market. You control what buyers offer to you.

By being in control, you can make a crazy amount of money from passion farming

Average prices of one kilo of passion fruit

Determining the selling or buying price of passion fruit, all you need is to visit the popular fresh produce markets in Kenya or supermarkets.

A visit to the popular fresh produce markets in Kenya like Wakulima market, Marigiti, and Mwembe tayari market, and checking out their prices can give you an indication of market demand and supply.

High prices indicate a shortage of passion fruits to the market, thus an opportunity to profit.

At the time of writing this blog post, the retail prices of passion fruit varied from Ksh 90-150 per kilo. Other traders sold one fruit for Ksh 10 per fruit. If we assume one fruit is about 50 grams; then a kilo sells for Ksh 200/=

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