The landscape changes as the road winds into Kitui County.
The green that often signals the beginning of Kenya's agricultural heartlands is hard to find here. Instead, the land stretches beneath a harsh sun, dotted with thorny bushes, sisal and the occasional baobab tree rising above the dry plains.
For miles, there is little indication that this is farmland.
But beneath the dry shrubs and sandy soils, farmers are preparing to plant a crop that has survived the changing fortunes of the region for generations.
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Kitui is classified as a semi-arid county, and farming here has always been a gamble with the weather. Rainfall is unreliable, temperatures can be unforgiving and a single failed season can wipe out months of work.
Yet for a group of farmers in the county, cotton remains one of the few crops capable of turning this difficult terrain into an income-generating asset.
Our journey into Kitui's cotton country begins at Mosa Shopping Centre along the Kibwezi-Mombasa highway.
On this particular day, the centre is unusually quiet. There are no crowds of farmers, traders or produce sellers. It is not market day, so activity is limited.
We are met by Mutuku Mulei, chairman of the Kitui Rural Farmers Cooperative, together with several cooperative members. After introductions, we leave the highway and head deeper into the villages.
The farms are not immediately obvious.
They are tucked between dry shrubs and sandy paths, blending almost seamlessly into the surrounding landscape.
There are, however, small signs that the land has recently received a little relief from the dry conditions. Patches of wet sand can be seen along the edges of the roads, evidence that the previous night brought some rain.
For farmers here, even such small showers carry significance.
But there is little cotton to see.
Mulei explains that the timing of our visit coincides with land preparation, rather than the height of the cotton-growing season. The fields are therefore largely empty, although remnants of the previous crop remain.
It is also a reminder of how easily cotton farming can disappear from the landscape when farmers lose confidence in the crop.
For years, poor prices, delayed inputs and problems at ginneries pushed many farmers away from cotton.
“Many farmers had given up on cotton because of poor prices and mismanagement at the ginneries,” Mulei says. However the Agriculture and Food Authority is building the capacities of local groups to feed raw lint straight into thriving local industries like the Kitui County Textile Centre (KICOTEC).
The Kitui Rural Farmers Cooperative currently has about 70 members, down from 85 approximately three years ago.
For a crop already battling unpredictable weather, losing farmers creates another problem: the production base becomes smaller just when the industry needs more farmers to participate.
But Mulei believes confidence could be returning.
The price of cotton has increased from KSh54 to KSh72 per kilogramme which is the government's gazetted minimum price over the last three years giving farmers a reason to reconsider the crop.
The stakes reach well beyond Kitui. Kenya’s domestic cotton lint production has experienced a steady recovery, rising from 1,300 tonnes in 2021 to roughly 8,800 tonnes (approx. 25,000 bales) Local supply satisfies less than 15% of manufacturer needs. To bridge this gap, Kenya is forced to spend hard currency to import massive quantities of cotton and yarn from neighboring Tanzania and Uganda. Across the continent, governments and financiers are betting that more of Africa's cotton can be ginned, spun and turned into garments within Africa, and traded across borders under the African Continental Free Trade Area, rather than exported raw. That ambition ultimately depends on farms like these.
He has been encouraging cooperative members to increase their acreage to at least one acre this season.
Most farmers have traditionally cultivated half an acre or less, largely because of the high cost of production and uncertainty over rainfall.
For Mulei, however, the current season presents an opportunity.
Weather forecasts pointing to more reliable rainfall in the coming weeks have also raised expectations among farmers.
“If the rains come as predicted, we are hopeful of getting better yields,” says Mulei.
But in Kitui, optimism has to contend with a familiar list of problems.
One of the biggest is access to quality seed.
The Kitui County Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Livestock Development collaborates with national bodies to coordinate distribution of the hybrid BT cotton seed variety to local registered farmers. Mulei says "farmers received poor-quality seed last season, and even that seed arrived late."
For a crop whose performance depends heavily on timely planting, delays at the beginning of the season can have consequences all the way to harvest.
The same problem has affected pesticides.
According to Mulei, inadequate or delayed access to pesticides resulted in pest attacks that affected almost half of the crop last season.
The impact was not only on quantity but also on quality.
Cotton that might otherwise have achieved Grade 1 quality was downgraded to Grade 2. Grade 2 typically trades at a discount compared to the top-grade minimum, ranging between KES 45 to KES 52/kg depending on local ginnery negotiations and quality.
For farmers already operating on narrow margins, every downgrade represents money lost.
Unlike farmers in areas with more dependable rainfall, Kitui farmers cannot simply rely on one crop to carry them through an entire season.
They have developed ways of spreading the risk.
One of those strategies is intercropping cotton with green grams.
It may look like an ordinary farming practice, but for these farmers it is also a financial survival mechanism.
Cotton can take 5 to 6 months to mature, meaning farmers must wait for a considerable period before receiving returns from their crop.
Green grams, on the other hand, mature in roughly three months.
The proceeds from the green grams therefore provide farmers with money while they wait for cotton.
It is a simple form of diversification, but in a semi-arid environment where farmers cannot afford to wait without income, it can make the difference between remaining in cotton farming and abandoning it altogether.
The cooperative itself has become another layer of support.
Solomon Mulu, the cooperative secretary, says membership provides farmers with access to knowledge as well as financial opportunities.
The cooperative regularly organises training sessions with various players in the cotton value chain, including the county government.
The sessions focus on the practical aspects of cotton production, from land preparation and spacing to input application, weeding, pest management and harvesting.
“The training has helped farmers understand the best management practices required in growing cotton,” M ulei says.
The county government has also supported farmers with knapsack sprayers.
In addition, young people have been trained to offer spraying services to farmers at a reduced fee.
It is a model that addresses two problems at once: helping farmers manage pests while creating an opportunity for youth to earn an income from the agricultural value chain.
But the issue of young people in cotton farming remains a bigger concern.
Most of the cooperative's members are over 50 years old.
For Mulu, this is a warning sign about the future of cotton production in the county.
Young farmers are generally attracted to crops that offer quicker returns.
Green grams and sunflower, which mature relatively quickly, are therefore more appealing to many young people than cotton, which requires patience before a farmer sees the rewards.
The challenge is not necessarily that young people have rejected agriculture.
Rather, they are making economic choices.
A young farmer looking for income within a few months may struggle to see the attraction of committing land, labour and inputs to a crop that could take almost a year to mature.
Mulu believes that this is where government policy could make a difference.
He wants the county and national governments to explore ways of incentivising young people to take up cotton farming.
For him, the crop still has considerable economic potential.
“There is no other cash crop in Kitui apart from cotton,” he says, arguing that production in Kenya remains low compared with other cotton-producing countries.
The cooperative is also trying to build a financial cushion for its members.
Farmers contribute KSh2 from every kilogramme of cotton sold at KSh72 per kilogramme.
There is also a compulsory annual contribution of KSh1,500 per member.
The money goes towards strengthening the cooperative's savings base, which members can eventually access through loans.
The loans can help farmers purchase inputs and maintain their farms while waiting for harvest.
For small-scale farmers, that waiting period can be one of the most difficult parts of cotton production.
A farmer may have already spent money preparing land, purchasing inputs and paying for labour, yet the income from cotton remains months away.
Access to cooperative credit can therefore provide a bridge between planting and harvest.
But even with improved prices, training and cooperative support, Kitui's greatest challenge remains erratic rainfall.
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Mulei says changing weather patterns have significantly disrupted farming in the region.
Rainfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable.
Sometimes the problem is not simply too little rain.
When rain eventually arrives, it can come with such intensity that it washes away the very soil farmers depend on.
Soil erosion has therefore become a major concern.
Mulei is encouraging farmers to construct gabions and terraces to control runoff and prevent flood water from destroying their fields.
He also advocates for proper land preparation.
Using an ox-plough, he says, can help break the hard pan beneath the soil, allowing crop roots to penetrate deeper.
Deeper roots can give plants better access to moisture while helping anchor them more firmly in the soil.
The goal is not merely to plant more cotton, but to build farms capable of surviving the increasingly unpredictable conditions.
It is a lesson that farmers across Kenya's drylands are learning: climate resilience is becoming as important as the choice of crop itself.
The county may not look like a conventional cotton-growing region.
There are no endless green fields stretching into the horizon. Much of the landscape appears better suited to thorny vegetation than commercial agriculture.
But cotton has an advantage here.
It is a crop that can perform under conditions where some of the crops traditionally associated with smallholder farming struggle.
Mulei and his fellow farmers see this as an opportunity.
Young people, meanwhile, need an economic reason to see cotton as more than an old man's crop.
The cooperative's shrinking membership is a warning, but the recent increase in cotton prices offers a reason for optimism.
The challenge now is turning that optimism into production.
Whether that happens will depend on more than rain: on seed and pesticides arriving on time, on ginneries and buyers that pay promptly, on finance that bridges the long wait to harvest, and on giving young farmers a reason to stay.
As we leave the farms around Mosa, the contrast is striking.
The landscape remains dry. The thorn bushes remain. The baobabs stand scattered across the horizon, while the sandy soil continues to bear the scars of years of erratic rainfall.
There is no lush cotton field to photograph yet.
Instead, what we find is something less visible but perhaps more important — farmers preparing the ground for another attempt.
