Every farm has fields. Ours has a story.

Chapter One · 1968

The Demonstration Farm

In 1968, on the high plateau west of Kilgoris — where the rain is generous and the soil runs deep and red — a farm was established with a simple, radical idea: that farming could be taught. Keiyian began life as a demonstration farm for livestock and crop production, a place where the community could see with their own eyes what good husbandry, good pasture and good organisation could yield.

Chapter Two · 1970

Becoming a Cooperative

On 10th January 1970, the farm’s future was formalised. Registered by the Commissioner of Co-operatives under certificate CS/1896, Keiyian Farmers Co-operative Society Ltd was born — owned not by a company or an individual, but by the farming families of Keiyian themselves. The object was written plainly into its founding purpose: to empower smallholder farmers through collective action, increased production and better access to markets.

Chapter Three · 1970s–2000s

Building the Herds

Over the decades, Keiyian did what few farms in the region attempted: it built pedigree herds. The Sahiwal — a hardy dual-purpose breed prized across East Africa for thriving where others falter — became the farm’s signature, alongside a pedigree Holstein Friesian dairy herd. Two milking parlours rose. A milk processing facility followed, turning the morning’s milk into yoghurt and maziwa mala. Practice by practice, Keiyian became the model farm it was founded to be.

Chapter Four · 2016 & 2020

Trial by Fire

No fifty-year story is without hardship. Twice — in 2016 and again in 2020 — arson swept through the cooperative’s sugarcane plantations, destroying crops worth tens of millions of shillings and years of labour. [VERIFY figures and framing with the board.] A lesser organisation might have folded. Keiyian’s members chose instead to rebuild, to diversify, and to plant again. Resilience, it turned out, was the crop that never failed.

Chapter Five · 2016 →

A New Chapter in Land and Law

Under Kenya’s Community Land Act of 2016, the land that generations had farmed as Keiyian Group Ranch began its formal transition into the hands of the Cooperative Society — securing, in law, what had always been true in practice: this land belongs to its farmers. [VERIFY current status of title transfer before publishing.]

Chapter Six · 2021–present

The Climate-Smart Turn

In partnership with SNV and KALRO under the ICSIAPL programme, Keiyian established a 21-acre demonstration plot of improved forages — Brachiaria, Panicum Mombasa, Lucerne, Sunn Hemp, Rhodes grass — and adopted a comprehensive Forage Master Plan charting the farm’s path to higher productivity with a lighter footprint. The results speak the language of both the farmer and the scientist: better-fed cattle, higher milk yields, and up to a third less methane per litre of milk produced.

Chapter Seven · Today

Today, and Tomorrow

Today Keiyian runs over 600 head of pedigree cattle, produces 900 litres of milk a day, trains farmers from across the region, hosts students from Kenya’s universities and colleges, and welcomes county leaders to its grounds for events that serve all of Narok. Tomorrow’s plans are already seeded: commercial hay production, seed bulking, livestock feed manufacturing, and value addition that keeps more of every shilling in Transmara.

The demonstration farm of 1968 is still demonstrating — now, what a Kenyan cooperative can become.