Sylvia’s Basket

Sylvia Kuria, Founder and CEO, Sylvia’s Basket

Sylvia’s Basket is a farm in Limuru that is committed to supplying fresh organic vegetables and fruits to its customers. It was founded in 2016 by Sylvia Kuria, an organic farmer based in Kenya. Sylvia was growing organic vegetables and fruits in her kitchen garden years before the founding of Sylvia’s Basket. She started supplying vegetables and fruits to a few friends in Nairobi. As Sylvia’s kitchen garden began to flourish, she was able to sell the surplus harvest to the city. The natural progression was to turn her hobby into a business: Sylvia’s Basket was founded. Deciding to scale up her organic farm business, she acquired about five acres of land in Limuru. In 2019, she opened a shop in Nairobi to make fresh organic food accessible to all her customers. Her main clients were young mothers, whom she reaches through her social media channels. Most of them came through customer referrals. Sylvia closed the shop at the end of 2023 as opportunities arose to collaborate with bigger retailers and e-commerce companies such as Carrefour and Greenspoon.

Since neighbours kept stopping by Sylvia’s garden to enquire how she was able to grow a large variety of vegetables, she volunteered to train them – and young mothers in particular – on how to set up kitchen gardens and grow their own vegetables and fruits using agroecological principles. The kitchen garden satisfies their nutritional needs, and provides them with food and a source of income.

The farmers she works with only use certified, safe, biological pesticides when absolutely necessary, thus ensuring the food provided is healthy and wholesome. Farmers selling the produce at the shop are certified through a participatory guarantee system (PGS) in partnership with organisations like Endev and SNV.

The Ndeiya region in Limuru, where Sylvia is based, is semi-arid, and the conditions are too harsh for cash crops to grow. The local communities face food insecurity for most of the year. The only way to achieve food and nutritional security was to teach women to grow their own food. Communities also lack access to electricity, so solar projector kits are very beneficial for the trainings.

Sylvia has collaborated with local and international organisations to equip over a thousand women and small-scale farmer groups throughout Kenya with the basic concepts of agroecological farming. In 2019, she was invited to be a master trainer in organic farming by the GIZ-funded Knowledge Centre for Organic Agriculture in Africa (KCOA) project. Sylvia also writes for Organic Farmer Magazine, where she shares her lessons and stories.

Sylvia is additionally advocating for relevant changes in policy frameworks. She is a member of the steering committee of a proposed agroecology policy for Kiambu, which is almost ready for tabling at the county level.

Projections to grow its operations

One of Sylvia’s Basket’s primary objectives is to develop and launch an application or establish an online shop by the end of this year. The aim is to leverage digital platforms to expand the business and its customer reach.

Another plan is to hire a dedicated field officer whose primary role will be to establish connections between farmers and the business. This field officer would also be responsible for providing comprehensive training programmes to farmers over two years, thereby enhancing their farming skills and knowledge.

It also aims to transform the existing farm into a comprehensive training centre within two years. This will facilitate the education and skill enhancement of numerous farmers in agroecological practices, contributing substantially to the growth and development of sustainable farming in the region.

There is an ever-increasing awareness and demand for organic food products in today’s society. Farmers are becoming more receptive to this trend, primarily due to the implications of climate change, the looming threat of food insecurity, and the detrimental impact of soil degradation on traditional farming practices.

The shop takes a stringent approach to the sources of its products. All farmers supplying the shop are required to produce organically. Moreover, they must be affiliated with either Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) or KOAN. Regular monitoring, through visits, is carried out to ensure that farmers adhere strictly to the standards and principles of organic farming.

The organisation has also been successful at reaching out to the younger generation. A staggering 90% of the people it engages with are young individuals, which demonstrates the effectiveness of its approach with this demographic.

The financing of the enterprise so far has primarily been accomplished through a combination of bank loans and the personal savings of the founders. These primary sources of capital have provided the necessary funds for the initial establishment and operation of the business, thereby allowing it to grow and progress.