For KOMAZA's farm families, the tree farms we provide are the perfect investment. By providing an asset that will produce income for years to come, tree farm ownership allows our families to take their futures into their own hands. Tree farms only require land and agricultural labor to thrive, which is something that all of our families are capable of providing. They grow well in the dry environments and poor quality soil where our families struggle to raise foodcrops, and they are planted on land that would otherwise be underutilized.
David's Example
This is David on his tree farm. David is not a KOMAZA farmer, but just like all of KOMAZA's partner farm families he is a small-scale farmer in Kenya's Kilifi district. Unlike KOMAZA's farmers, David has been fortunate enough to find employment earning $2.50 per day as a domestic worker. Even this meager income has allowed David to save up enough money to invest in planting a small tree farm, which earned him five times his initial investment in just five years. The income from just a few trees was a significant financial boost for David's family, and the trees were not difficult for him to plant and maintain.
David's example demonstrates that tree farming is a viable way to provide poor rural families the extra income that they desperately need. Unfortunately, the poorest families typically earn less than a quarter of David's income and even a small investment in tree farming is well beyond their reach. Also, earnings from David's tree farm are well below their potential, because he does not have the ability to process and market his trees as high-profit wood products. If the poorest rural families could make the up-front investment in a tree farm and process their trees into high-value products, they could generate truly life-changing levels of income to pull themselves out of extreme poverty.
The Partnership Poor Families Need
KOMAZA provides the poorest farm families with everything they want and need to operate a profitable small-scale tree farm. We make the up-front investment in tree seedlings, planting inputs and farming materials that poor farmers cannot afford. Our farmers offer a portion of their otherwise underutilized land for a tree farm and invest their effort and labor in planting, maintaining and raising their trees under KOMAZA's guidance. At each harvest, KOMAZA collects trees from large numbers of our partner farm families, processes them into high-value tree products and sells them on major nearby urban markets, returning unprecedented profits to our families.
This partnership provides our families with a long-term solution to the problems of extreme poverty by creating a sustainable source of income that would not be possible if they were working on their own. Tree farming is an activity that Kenya's rural families are well-suited to carry out. KOMAZA works to remove the barriers erected by poverty that prevent families from investing in valuable tree farms. We do this while ensuring that our partner farm families receive the most income possible from the trees they raise.
