Watermelon expenses are not so high as compared to onions and tomatoes. Watermelons take about two and a
half months to mature, hence I saw it as a good Venture in agriculture because
there was a shortage of the time of planting to harvesting. Sometimes you find that the
land you have is not the best for watermelons farming, most of the cases you
have to find land which is I say I can say a virgin land, which has not been utilized.
Watermelon farming costs and expenses depends on the weather conditions for
example the January February March season is very hot so it requires a lot of
watering, Pest Control fungicides and fertilizer application. Therefore,
expenses depend on the piece of the area you are in and type of soils. For
example me I’ve used up to now 90,000 Kenyan shillings on starting from renting
plowing to harvesting and I’m expecting about 12 tons for the first grade and
about five tons for grade two. A
kilogram of watermelon now goes for 17 Kenya Shillings.
Challenges
twice or thrice according to your climatic conditions, you are in. One of the
biggest challenges I’ve had in watermelon farming is climate changes due to the
weather patterns which have changed it has affected adversely in terms of
watering insecticides have been so much in fact the prices have skyrocketed. Another
challenge which has been here in watermelon farming is fertilizer prices have
gone up the funky sides have gone up basically there’s been inflation in all the
inputs in watermelon farming.
Cost reduction
farm to reduce labor expense also you can substitute fertilizer with manure. For
a young farmer who want to venture into watermelon farming my advice to them will
be first to maybe contact an agronomist because they are very different
challenges depending on weather patterns so you need maybe to look at the type
of soil because soil again matters when it comes to watermelon farming. Secondly,
you can visit farmers who have been doing farming of the watermelon so that you
can ask what they have been doing on the weather patterns.
