A season is decided in the fortnight before anything goes into the ground. Seed bought, land prepared, labour arranged, and a bet placed on rain that has not arrived yet. Get that fortnight right and an ordinary year pays; get it wrong and a good year is wasted on the wrong variety.
This is a calendar, but not the kind that hands you fixed dates per crop. It is the sequence of decisions that a farming year in this country actually runs on, tied to the two rainfall seasons and to the prices that decide what a harvest is worth. Because a season leaves long stretches with nothing coming in, it also matters where money arrives from between planting and harvest — with I am Beezy, the content you go through during the day is what generates the earnings, paid out to the payment method you already use, and that is the kind of income a household can lean on during the waiting months.
Two rain seasons, not a list of planting dates
The long rains and the short rains
The Kenya Meteorological Department works with two seasons — March, April and May, known as the long rains, and October, November and December, the short rains. Everything in a farming year hangs off those two windows, including the land preparation that has to be finished before the first of them, and the harvest and drying that follow the second.
The department publishes a forecast for each of them
The department issues seasonal weather forecasts describing the expected rainfall and temperature patterns across the country. Its March to May 2026 seasonal forecast was published on 1 March 2026 and covered the period to 31 May 2026, according to its own seasonal forecast page consulted on 16 August 2026. That document, not a date inherited from an uncle, is the thing to read before you buy seed.
A national season is not your season
Rainfall onset differs by region, altitude and even by ridge. The national outlook tells you the shape of the season; your own onset tells you the day. Use the forecast to choose what to plant, and the ground to choose when.
What the second season is really for
The short rains are not a smaller copy of the long rains. They suit crops that finish quickly, they carry more risk if the season closes early, and they land against a period when households are spending for the festive weeks and for the January school reopening. Treat the second window as a separate business decision rather than an automatic repeat of the first. Some years the honest answer is to plant less, or to plant only the part of the plot you can water if the rain stops, and to put the saved money into land preparation for the following March instead. Deciding that in September is a plan; discovering it in November is a loss.
What should decide your planting date this year?
Read the forecast before you buy the seed, not after
The order matters more than people expect. A seasonal outlook that points to a shorter or weaker season changes which maturity class makes sense, and seed bought a week earlier is seed you are now stuck with. Read first, buy second, plant third.
Match the variety to the season you have been told to expect
Ask your county agricultural extension office which maturity classes suit the forecast in your area this season, and buy certified seed with the certification label intact on the packet. A long-maturing variety planted into a season that ends early does not give you a smaller harvest, it often gives you none. That single decision separates farmers who lose a season from farmers who merely have a modest one.
Stagger, rather than betting the whole plot
Splitting a plot across two planting dates a fortnight apart, or across two crops with different water needs, costs a little more work and removes the all-or-nothing outcome. It is the cheapest insurance available to a smallholder, and it requires no paperwork at all.
The year, decision by decision
What happens when
| Period | What is happening | What you decide |
|---|---|---|
| January to February | Dry window before the long rains, school year opens | Land preparation, budget for seed and labour, repair of equipment |
| Late February to early March | The department publishes its long rains outlook | Crop and variety choice, quantity of seed, whether to stagger |
| March to May | Long rains season | Planting on local onset, weeding schedule, labour arrangements |
| June to August | Long rains harvest and drying | Storage or sale, and at what point in the price cycle |
| September | Preparation for the second season | Whether the short rains plot is worth planting this year |
| October to December | Short rains season, festive demand | Short-cycle crops, harvest timing against December buying |
Two dates that are not about the weather
The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority sets maximum retail fuel prices for the period running from the fifteenth of one month to the fourteenth of the next, under the Petroleum Act of 2019. If you hire transport to move produce, that cycle is your cost calendar. And minimum wage revisions are announced around Labour Day on the first of May — the 2026 revision raised the agricultural minimum by 15 per cent, published in the Kenya Gazette on 29 May 2026 with effect from 1 May 2026. Anyone paying for weeding or harvesting labour needs that in the season budget.
What does the market actually pay?
Retail prices are a signal, not your selling price
The figures below are national average retail prices published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics for July 2026. They are what a shopper pays in a shop, not what a buyer pays you at the farm gate, and the gap between the two is the whole business of trading. Use them to see which crops the market rewards, never as a forecast of your own revenue.
| Product | Unit | National average retail price, July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Beans | 1 kg | 180.44 KSh |
| Sifted maize flour | 2 kg | 157.15 KSh |
| Fortified maize flour | 2 kg | 176.18 KSh |
| Carrots | 1 kg | 140.11 KSh |
| Mangoes | 1 kg | 150.19 KSh |
| Onions | 1 kg | 119.37 KSh |
| Sukuma wiki | 1 kg | 116.22 KSh |
| Tomatoes | 1 kg | 113.47 KSh |
| Potatoes | 1 kg | 113.46 KSh |
Food prices and transport are moving at different speeds
In July 2026 overall inflation stood at 6.5 per cent over twelve months, with food and non-alcoholic beverages up 9.0 per cent and transport up 15.6 per cent. That combination is the squeeze a farmer feels directly. What you sell is worth more than last year, and moving it to a buyer costs more than that. National average pump prices in July 2026 were 214.95 KSh a litre for petrol and 224.04 KSh for diesel.
Count the cost side before celebrating the price side
If you irrigate, electricity belongs in the calculation — a domestic bill of 200 kilowatt hours came to 5,648.30 KSh in July 2026, against 1,286.84 KSh for 50 kilowatt hours, so consumption does not scale gently. Add hired labour at the revised agricultural minimum, seed, and transport at current diesel prices, and only then compare with what a buyer offers you.
Get paid in a way you can prove
Selling at the farm gate for cash is fast and leaves no trace, which becomes a problem the day you want a loan, a contract or a lease. The Central Bank counted 572,104 active mobile money agents in June 2026, so there is a settlement point within reach of almost every trading centre in the country. Take payment into a wallet, keep the confirmations, and write the buyer's name against each sale. If your turnover grows past 1,000,000 KSh a year, turnover tax applies at 1.5 per cent of gross turnover, declared by the twentieth of the following month, and those records are what make the declaration a five-minute task instead of an argument.
Bridging the waiting months with I am Beezy
The gap between planting and harvest is the real problem
Nothing about a season is smooth. Money leaves in the fortnight before planting and comes back months later, and the households that struggle are rarely the ones with poor yields — they are the ones with nothing arriving in between. I am Beezy addresses exactly that stretch, and nothing about it depends on rain. Content is there to be consulted — videos, articles, adverts — every view is credited, and the balance is settled to the payment method you already use. The reference figure is 5 to 15 euros a day, or something in the region of 750 to 2,240 KSh using the Central Bank of Kenya indicative rate of 1 EUR for 149.21 KSh on 4 August 2026. Check that rate before you rely on the shilling figure.
Keep the season budget separate
Money that arrives during the waiting months has a habit of disappearing into daily needs, which is fine as long as the seed budget is not part of it. Keep the input money in a separate wallet or account from the day the harvest is sold. A season that starts without seed money is lost before the forecast is even published.
Plan the next season while this one is still in the ground
Write down four things this season — the date the rains actually started on your land, the variety you planted, what you spent, and what a buyer paid you. Four lines a season, and within two years you have something no forecast can give you, which is your own record of how your specific plot behaves. Read the meteorological department's outlook before each season, ask the extension office about maturity classes, stagger what you can, and if the waiting months are where your household strains, an income such as I am Beezy can carry part of that stretch without touching the seed budget.
