Despite being a street urchin in his early years, 75-year-old James Karanja, the Director of Pokea Farm in Njoro has become one of the leading farmers in the area.
Karanja was forced to the streets at the age of 14 after his parents were forcefully evicted from their farm in Kipkelion and taken to concentration farms in Central Province by the colonial government.
"Life for me became a fight for survival. I sniffed gum, picked people’s pockets and constantly escape mob justice," he said.
Karanja has arisen to become the Director of the Kenya Dairy Board in the Central Rift and one of the most successful breeders in the region.
His eighteen acre farm, located on the outskirts of Nakuru is a major distributor of semen across Africa, Asia and Europe. He has two bulls at the Bulls Catalogue at the Central Artificial Insemination centre at Kabete.
He supplies one-month-old calves to Kabete Insemination centre for Ksh50,000 a calf with none of the of the pedigree cows going for less than Ksh200,000.
Karanja provides cows for the government to export to Burundi and Rwanda due to their high quality and demand in the market.
He has also been working with Osna brucker Herdburch, a German plant that supplies export semen, embryos and pedigree livestock since he is one of the best farmers in the region.
He uses sexed semen which ensures that his cows give birth to male calves to satisfy the demand in the market.
His thirty cows provide an average of 50 litres of milk each which he sells and produce dairy farm products.
Due to high demand for goat milk, he has thirty bred goats that produce an average of five litres a day. His farm also has poultry for his daily supply of eggs.
Karanja's cows have also won numerous awards at the Agricultural Society of Kenya Shows and he has received numerous awards from the current President for his good breeds.