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Avocado farmers from Gatundu North Constituency in Kiambu Country are counting huge losses owing to thievery from their farms where the fruits are illegally harvested.

The thieves are reported to be invading the farms in the dead of the night and harvesting the fruits for sale to middlemen who buy them at throw-away prices.

Farmers decried that the crime is being executed by young boys from various villages who get up to Sh3 per piece of avocado sold to middlemen as compared to between Sh10-20 that they make when they sell the fruits to exporters who buy at their respective farms.

The burglary, they lamented, is being facilitated by brokers who buy the fruits whose sources are not known.

The farmers lamented that organised gangs who are radically penetrating the lucrative avocado trade in the region could plunge them into poverty, as they entirely rely on the fruits for their livelihoods.
Increase in the prices of avocado fruits locally and globally is also reported to have drawn a host of brokers to the trade.

While the farmers have been laughing all the way to the bank from the booming avocado business, the emerging trend of organized theft, they said, is threatening the newly found gold after their coffee and tea businesses collapsed due to infiltration of the sectors by cartels.

Led by Peter Kabui Maina who recently lost Sh 250,000 worth of avocado fruits, the farmers complained that the thieves may end up sinking the sector as the affected farmers are considering uprooting the avocado trees to venture into other businesses.

“They recently came and harvested two full pickups of the avocado fruits. I thought this would be my turning point having suffered financial constraints for months. I feel hopeless and unable to continue farming this crop if at all we are toiling all this for thieves,” decried Kabui.

Kabui noted that most affected villages in the constituency are Turiru, Kariua, Mutuma, Mang’u, Mukuyuini among others where farmers are now spending sleepless nights, armed with pangas to guard the crop against the thieves.

Joseph Waithaka, the Turiru village elder, called on the government to speedily intervene by beefing up security in the area through increased police patrols and installation of security lights to reduce the crime.

“This village is very dark. We suffer because we are at the border of two Wards. If we get street lights here then we will be able to deal with the thieves or at least get to know who they really are,” said Waithaka.

The farmers at the same time called on the government to enact laws that will stop brokers from collapsing the sector that millions of farmers rely on for economic survival.

Kimani Gachihi, a leader in Gatundu North said that most farmers in the constituency left coffee and tea businesses and ventured into avocado trade to survive only for the sector to recently witness the intensified burglary.

The demand for avocados in the international market has been on the rise with Kenya earning billions in exports