Dominion Farms puts power to create wealth in the people’s hands

American investor Calvin Burges heard about the Yala Swamp and its collapsed rice fields from a friend. That was 11 years ago.

Today, as he stands, hands akimbo, and casts his eyes across the thousands of acres he has reclaimed he could as well claim to have made economic sense out of a swamp. The rolling rice fields, the John Deer tractors and harvestors that plough through the fields showcase a massive investment —hidden in the heart of Siaya County.

Burges, the owner of Dominion Farms, took us around the vast area that today draw researchers and agro-tourists from all corners of the world.

“A friend of mine who had visited the area in 2000 told me there was an opportunity here worth checking out,” he recalls.

“When we came to Yala the terrain was impenetrable and every inch of where we are standing right now was submerged under swamp water. We leased the land for 25 years, with the chief purpose of transforming it into farmland”.

Yala was never a swamp to begin with. It was barren land but decades of massive pollution caused by human settlement upstream saw the water slowly stagnate and the swamp gradually grow bigger.

Mr Burges ran into a challenge.

“There are two things to do when you are reclaiming land from a swamp”, he says. “First you have to stop the water from filling it up and secondly you have to drain what is already in”.

“Our initial step was to stop the flow of water to the swamp and we built 12km of dykes that ran from the dam down to Lake Namboyo and basically relocate the river. We split it and sent part of it into Lake Kanyaboli and part of it to Lake Namboyo”.

This stopped the water from flowing into the swamp and the next step for Mr Burges and his team was to drain the water.

“For the last three years we have been draining it to lower the water table and as this goes down we start developing the land”.
The process is challenging and though heavily mechanised, relies on the course of nature and cannot be rushed.

“The land dries from the top down and you have to wait for it to dry substantially before you can use any equipment on it which makes the process painstakingly slow. In addition to this, rain water reverses the drainage process and takes you back to the beginning.”

Moreover, land reclamation, like any other earth moving exercise like mining and road construction is not cheap. Mr Burges has so far spent over $40 million doled out in the last seven years. Most of the cost has been consumed by the assembly of tonnes of earth-moving equipment from the US and Brazil and labour costs.

The process is far from over and the costs keep rising.

Dominion Farms sits on five thousand acres of rehabilitated swampland and Mr Burges intends to reclaim all the swamp land under his leasehold.

“We have 17,050 acres of property and we have to date developed approximately 5,000 of that but we want to reclaim every bit of it. The water table is falling and soon we can get more equipment on the land. We hope that with all factors holding constant, the rest of the reclamation will be complete in the next two years”.

Mr Burges started developing the land so far reclaimed in 2005. He raised the level of the water to make it accessible and then extended the power lines to the farm and to the local communities.

After several batches of crop research, Dominion Farms settled on paddy rice which could produce two harvests per annum. A state of the art rice processing plant with the ability of processing 10,000 tonnes of rice per day was installed and the first batch hit the shelves in 2007.

The farm has a research facility on site and propagates its own rice seed. “Everything is done here from the propagation of the rice seed, growing, harvesting, milling, packaging and sale,” says Mr Chris Abir, Dominion Farms director.

Retailing at Sh85 per kilogramme, Prime Harvest Rice is the flagship of Dominion Farms’ range of products and was recently entered in a cooking contest in Britain and won. The current rice production output for the farm is about 3,500 – 4,000 tonnes per annum and is looking to double this output by the end of next year. At the completion of the reclamation in the next two years, Dominion Farms is looking to expand its output to 10,000 – 12,000 tons of rice a year

Aside from rice production, Dominion Farms has ventured into the production of fingerlings and is the main contract supplier for the government’s fish farming ESP programme. “Currently we are supplying the Kenyan government with fingerlings at their request and we sell two million fingerlings per month either directly or through our 26 distributors, says Mr Burges.”

The demand for fingerlings is great owing to the adoption of fish farming throughout the country and Dominion Farms has up to 200 farmers in the waiting list.

Production costs

The farm also operates eight trial fish ponds each with the capacity of holding 80,000 fish and is planning to set up tens of ponds in a massive fish cropping programme to cover 160 acres of land.

The farm breeds Nile Perch and on small -scale and cat fish which is still on a trial basis. Here again the costs of production are staggering. Currently the farm has spent more than $2 million on breeding costs alone.

“Fish farming requires proper breeding stock and you have to be very careful to avoid in-breeding,” says Mr Burges. “This causes stock that is susceptible to disease. If you are going to have a fish farm you begin from five years before you start the fish farm and continue forever. 
“You always have to do more research, develop healthier strains and ensure that your fish have the correct growth span and maximum output. We have brought our breed from an average of 24- 29 per cent meat content to an average of 35 per cent and in breeding this is a significant step”.

The fish farm is also fully self-sufficient. From the propagation of the breed, the breeding process, harvesting, packaging and selling everything is done at the farm. The fish retails for Sh200 per kilogramme and can be found in local small stores.

“Our target market is Kenya and our prices are deliberately lower. We are trying to reach to the majority of Kenyans who are in the low income bracket,” says Mr Burges. “For us at Dominion Farms, money is not the primary goal. The primary concern is providing food security for the growing population”.

Part of the conditions for obtaining the lease for Dominion Farms was to improve food security for the local population. In this regard, the farm sells most of its produce directly to retail stores and local supermarkets and avoids dealing with middle men.

“Everything we produce is consumed in East Africa,” says Mr Abir. “Some people may buy it and sell it in other markets but what happens to it after it leaves our hands we have no control over it. We have however heard that Prime Harvest rice is in Southern Sudan but we are not the ones sending it there.”

In addition to the rice and fish farming programmes, Dominion Farms is venturing into the large scale production of Soya beans. The soya beans are a chief ingredient in the production of fish, chicken and dog feeds which the farm produces.

The farm has also acquired a herd of 100 heifers in a test programme for dairy and beef production and hopes to build a herd of 600 cattle for milk and beef production in the next two years. Plans are also under way to roll out a brand of dog feed and a porridge mix to retail under the same name.

“We are also in the process of setting up two power sources at the farm”, says Mr Burgess. “One will be a biomass digester for the generation of biogas and a hydro-power production plant on a waterfall 1,153 metres above sea level built on a canal on River Yala”.

The energy generated from the facilities will complement the propane that is usually used to run the heavy machinery at the farm mills. In addition to this, surplus energy will be sold to the national grid and distributed to the locals.

Dominion Farms is also an agro tourism site in the western tourism circuit. Every month the management receives an average of 50 requests for visits from learning institutions in Kenya and abroad.

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