It’s Mumias

A couple days ago I asked where this picture was taken:

Kabinti was closest. It is a sugar plantation but not at Sony.

This picture is part of the sugarcane that forms the Nucleus Estate (NE) acreage for the Mumias Sugar Company. Mumias is in Western Kenya between the town of Kakamega and the Ugandan border (roughly). In the sugar industry, Nucleus Estate refers to the sugarcane that is owned by the production company, in this case Mumias Sugar. The NE at Mumias is approximately 4,000 ha (approx 10,000 acres).

The vast majority of sugarcane processed at Mumias comes from independent contracted farmers who are referred to as Out Growers (OG). Out Growers, such as yours truly, farm another 42,000 ha (approx 104,000 acres) of sugarcane which is processed at Mumias. These 42,000 ha, however, are owned by approximately 42,000 individual farmers so the vast majority are small scale farmers. It would be interesting to see if there is any other large scale industry in Kenya/Africa in which the local community have such wide scale individual stakes. 42,000 ha, 42,000 individual farmers.

You can see all the pictures from Mumias and other parts of Kenya on the Mentalacrobatics flickr page under the tag “Beautiful Kenya”.

Thanks for all the comments and guesses!