Planting seeds of resolve: Expert insights on farming, fitness, and fresh starts

The year was 2021, what I remember hesitantly as Covid 2.0. The world was learning to function in a fragile new normal after having stood still as a pandemic ravaged livelihood, and certainly itself.

Like many businesses, mine was sputtering, choked by unpredictability and shrinking opportunity. To keep my mind from collapsing inward, I turned outward to the great outdoors.

Friends joked that it was madness, but for me it was therapy, release, and rebirth. It was a new season, and I was planting

In hindsight, it was probably the best decision I ever made. Within twelve months, I summited both Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya and ran two marathons, including a full 42-kilometre race. It was a period defined by physical conquest and a deep sense of invincibility.

Few would have imagined that just three years later, at the age of 40, I would be facing a double hip replacement, a chapter I will explore later in this series.

There is something about the start of a new year that instinctively triggers renewal. A sense of rebirth, of personal and professional reset, takes hold. Perhaps it is the quiet reckoning with the missteps of the past year, or the deliberate resolve to build on foundations laid in earlier seasons.

It is “planting” season and what you reap is what you sow. Just as I did in 2021, I started the year with the resolutions and goals that we desire to crack and shutter. So deep is my resolve that my good friend, former Chief Administrative Secretary Ministry of ICT & Youth affairs Nadia Ahmed (yes I name drop occasionally), says that I am one of the most deliberate people she knows.

In agriculture, the symbolism of rebirth is not abstract, it is practical. The turn of the calendar marks the beginning of another planting season.

A fresh start, yes, but one grounded in experience. Farmers return to the land armed with hard-earned lessons: what failed and what thrived. With every jembe breaking the soil, risk is acknowledged but not allowed to paralyse

Farming mirrors life and business in a fundamental way: every season begins with intention. We set resolutions and commitments to improve performance, efficiency, or outcomes. This is followed by planning: the design of systems, processes, and protocols that, if executed consistently, increase the probability of success.

Whether the goal is personal fitness or optimal germination rates that promise future returns, the principle is the same. There is no shortcut. Like the fabled road to Eldorado, the journey is long, uncertain, and demands sustained motivation.

Planning alone, however, does not deliver results. Execution requires tools, capital, and trade-offs. As in business and in life, there is no free lunch. Choices must be made about how much to invest and where.

One may pursue progress through modest means or opt for premium solutions; the destination may be similar, but the cost structures differ. What matters is alignment between ambition, resources, and discipline. To use an analogy, life is like a game of Monopoly.

Let’s say you land in jail repeatedly, while playing the board game, the only way to get out of that mess is to roll the dice or buy your way out. I don’t know about you, but my father was one of those people who was star gazing while others were passing go and collecting 200.

At Tukalime, the agricultural firm I lead, this planting season is anchored firmly in data rather than sentiment.

If one plans to establish a large sunflower and maize plantation, for example, there should be one simple reality: stabilising food prices requires affordable and reliable animal feed.

For a nation that remains a net importer of agricultural commodities, substituting imports with local production is both an economic and strategic imperative

New seasons are not confined to fields. They unfold in boardrooms, balance sheets, and personal lives.

Each season presents a single defining question: what are you planting, and what is guiding those choices? The answer, more than enthusiasm or optimism, determines what the harvest will eventually look like.

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Kevin Kamau is a Kenyan Agripreneur and the Founder and Managing Director of Tukalime Ventures Ltd, an agricultural enterprise focused on transforming idle and underutilized land into productive, commercially viable farms.