Agribusiness: How to start a blog for farmers in Kenya

Continuing with the how to start blogging in Kenya series, today we look at another topic: how to start a blog targeted at farmers in Kenya.

Why start a blog for farmers in Kenya

  1. To share your expertise as a veterinary officer, researcher, government agency, county government official or engineer.
  2. To share your success with other farmers in Kenya by publishing articles that show how you go about farming, the challenges you’ve faced and how you have overcome them.
  3. To share links to resources you have come across that can help farmers in Kenya. For example, by publishing reviews of farm inputs, tools, machines – giving readers information on their features, their benefits, their prices and where to buy them.

These are some of the avenues you can explore if you are interested in starting a blog in the agricultural niche – to help Kenyan farmers employ the best practices possible to ensure bountiful harvests and lots of sales.

The articles, guides, tutorials, ebooks and courses you will publish on your new blog will be geared towards making sure farmers learn how to bring to the market the best produce possible – produce that sell well and earns them good returns.

 Note: This post may contain affiliate links. When you click on something I recommend and purchase it, I will receive a commission for the sale – at no extra cost to you. 

To start the blog, you’ll just need to register a domain name, pay for a web hosting plan and start publishing and promoting the articles you write – to reach as many farmers as possible.

Before you do that though, here are some ideas that can help you build a great blog in this niche.

Pick what you will and use it before and after you launch your site.

Learn from other agriculture, farming, agribusiness blogs in Kenya (and pull-outs in magazines and Kenyan newspapers)

The aim here, when you visit these other blogs, is to learn from the bloggers behind them.

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To learn what they have done, and what they are continuing to do, to make sure their blogs grow and reach more farmers.

Learn from the type of content these blogs publish. If they publish certain types of posts (like tutorials and success stories) it means that such articles resonate well with their audience – people who want to get into agribusiness or those that want to learn more ways to grow their already existing agricultural ventures.

Learn from their posting frequency – and depth of content. How many times do they publish articles per week – and how long and thorough are the articles they publish? This will help you come up with your own schedule – and ensure you have more fresh content added to your blog on a regular basis.

Learn about the niche they target. Some agribusiness blogs in Kenya cover almost every topic related to agriculture. Then there are some that are even more specific in the scope of content they publish.

Some of these niches include: dairy farming, poultry farming and fish farming in Kenya. Some of the blogs are targeted at urban farmers living in various towns and cities in Kenya.

Some blogs publish articles to do with fruit farming, growing vegetables, nuts, grains, tree farming, rabbit farming, pig farming, rearing cattle for meat, sugarcane farming, coffee farming, tea farming, maize and cassava farming, value addition and packaging among other topics.

Choose what you are interested in covering when you launch your blog, so that you can prepare and be ready for your blog’s launch date by having some articles already written and ready to be published when your blog goes live.

Also check the various Facebook groups and fan pages targeting youths who want to invest their money into farming.

You can also learn a lot by buying and reading newspapers (like The Star, Daily Nation, The Standard, and The People Daily).

Check the sections that touch on farming.

Also read pull-out magazines like Seeds of Gold which is available free in Saturday Nation newspapers.

Read them and learn from the type of content they publish.

Also check the types of questions readers ask other experts in the pull-outs, magazines, groups, forums, FM radio stations you listen to and TV shows you watch.

There is a variety of shows targeting existing farmers and Kenyan youth who want to do agribusiness on NTV Kenya, Citizen TV, KTN, iNooro TV, KBC, K24, Kyeni TV, Meru TV among others.

Decide what you want to do with your farming blog

Your blog must have a strong reason why it exists. For that matter, read this post – Reasons to start a blog – before you spend any money on domains, hosting and web design.

See also  How to start a blog in Kenya + web hosting plans to buy

When you read the post, you’ll realize that there are many things you can do when it comes to blogging.

For some quick ideas, below are some things you can include in your blog.

Share expertise that has come out of your experiences (failures and successes)

Articles and guides that you publish from experience always add a lot of value to beginner farmers.

In these articles they can learn to avoid mistakes you made. Or put into use some of the strategies you implemented to:

  • increase your yield
  • find suppliers
  • find buyers
  • win tenders or
  • earn more from your produce

You can write blog posts about:

  • how you dealt with crop diseases
  • how you dealt with cattle diseases
  • how you dealt with poultry diseases
  • how you dealt with power outages
  • how you found genuine suppliers selling quality feeds at affordable rates
  • how you got insurance
  • how you got a loan
  • how you expanded your business
  • how you rose from failure to succeed in farming – and keep going despite many challenges
  • how you find buyers and actually get paid, among other things.

Write reviews targeted at Kenyans involved or interested in agribusiness

Review various products and services targeted at Kenyan farmers by companies in Kenya and other foreign persons.

Share how you get more out of the products you review, how you deal with the challenges you face when using the products and services you review, mention any better alternatives you have come across among other things you want to bring to the attention of your audience.

Share other farmers’ successes and failures by interviewing them

Find other farmers who have done well in their area – and interview them.

Once you have interviewed them, publish the content on your blog – to motivate and inspire your audience into working hard to grow their own agribusinesses.

You can do this by interviewing:

  • farmers you meet in agricultural shows, conferences, seminars or meetups
  • farmers in your city, estate, village or town
  • large scale farmers in different counties and countries

Sell consultations, guides or mini-conferences

Like Graduate Farmer blog, you can make money from your blog by selling guides that help farmers achieve some specific goals.

This blog earns some of its income by selling digital downloads (guides) with step-by-step instructions on how to do things like: plant capsicum, onions among other things.

They use WooCommerce plugin (to power their online shop) and Lipa na M-PESA by Kopo Kopo (to receive payment from people who buy the guides).

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They also hold events sometimes teaching people on various things related to farming.

Sell your harvest (output from your farm) to Kenyans

Wendy’s Farm share poultry tips on their website / blog. They also offer training to farmers on poultry at their farm.

They have hatcheries and sell one day old chicks.

You can book the one-day old chicks via their site.

This is an example of a farm that also benefits from the exposure the content on their site gets – by using their site as a place to sell chicks they hatch to farmers, companies, schools and organizations interested in rearing chicken – layers and broilers of different breeds.

Same is the case with the Kuku Kienyeji blog – which has lots of articles on rearing KARI improved kienyeji. On their blog, they also invite their readers to buy one-day olds (among other things like bird cages) from them.

Monetize your blog with ads from companies and organizations in Kenya targeting farmers

You can monetize your blog using Google AdSense ads or sell advertising directly to companies and organizations that sell products and services targeted at those interested in agribusiness.

These include companies and organizations that sell farm inputs: seeds, fertilizers, machinery, breeds, chemicals among other things.

With the good content you publish on your site, the advertising space you sell will give exposure to products and services your audience can buy and benefit from.

The ads will bring you money which you can use to grow your blog.

The ads will also give exposure to the companies you promote – helping your readers discover more great things to use in their farms.

When done well, all the parties involved benefit from the ads (including banners, video and sponsored posts) you place on your blog.

Register a domain name, pay for web hosting, launch your blog and start publishing

To register a domain name and get web hosting for your blog, go with a Kenyan web hosting company or a foreign hosting company of your choice. Then install WordPress and set up your blog.

Learn more about the cost of starting a blog in Kenya.

Alternatively, you can let Niabusiness.com help you with the process of domain registration and web hosting. See Niabusiness.com hosting plans here.

Niabusiness.com will install WordPress and set up everything (themes and plugins) so that your blog is ready for publishing.

Remember that many farmers and companies selling farm inputs have discovered that having their own blogs (besides having social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram) gives them the advantage:

  • to use their blogs to teach and gain trust from prospective buyers
  • to be found online by Kenyans searching for information online using search engines
  • to have another platform to reach customers
  • to get feedback from others. The feedback can be useful in helping others who are already into farming or those interested in going that route
  • to have a place on the internet where people can learn more about them any time of the day

Explore some of the related posts below to find more ideas you can use when you launch your blog.

To you: Have any suggestions, questions or stories you’d like to share with me that are related to what has been covered in this post? Let me know by sharing your thoughts in the comments below.

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