Seven crops account for the bulk of Kenya's farmgate value — but tea alone earns more export dollars than the next three combined.
Kenya's crop economy is concentrated and uneven. Maize is the food staple — eaten, not exported. Tea is the export champion. Coffee, once a giant, has been on a decades-long structural decline. Horticulture and cut flowers are the highest-value-per-hectare success stories. Sugarcane and avocado round out a sector where geography, altitude and rainfall almost entirely determine what is grown where.
Maize is volume. Tea is value.
The chart on the right ranks Kenya's main crops by national farmgate value, in KSh billion. The hierarchy is sharper than most observers expect: tea sits above every other crop by a comfortable margin, despite a smaller harvested area than maize. Cut flowers and horticulture punch far above their land-use weight.
Maize dominates the calorie supply but contributes far less in value terms — a function of price, not volume. Coffee, once a flagship, now contributes about a quarter of what tea does.
This chart ranks Kenya's individual crops by farmgate value — the value realised at the farm gate, before processing, transport or export margin.
Tea and maize dominate, but for different reasons.
Tea is value (KSh 218B) on a comparatively small footprint. Maize is volume — the staple — at roughly KSh 152B. Sugarcane, flowers and horticulture sit just behind.
Headline indicators
By county →Maize — the staple
Top maize counties →The chart plots annual maize harvest from 2014 to 2024. Read troughs as drought years and recoveries as the effect of better rains and subsidised inputs.
Subsidy-driven recovery, then a weather-dented plateau.
Maize fell to roughly 34M bags during the 2022 drought. The Fertiliser Subsidy Programme is widely credited with the climb back to about 38M bags in 2023/24.
The chart ranks counties by their share of national maize production for the 2023/24 season.
Five counties grow half of Kenya's maize.
Trans Nzoia, Uasin Gishu, Narok, Bungoma and Nakuru together produce roughly half of national output.
Maize production has been climbing since the launch of the Fertiliser Subsidy Programme in 2022, which dropped fertiliser prices for smallholders by an estimated 50–60%. Trans Nzoia, Uasin Gishu, Narok, Bungoma and Nakuru together produce roughly half of all the maize Kenya grows.
Tea — the export anchor
Trade dashboard →The chart pairs annual tea production volume against total export earnings from 2014 to 2024.
Volumes are growing. Earnings are softer.
Tea volumes climbed past 570kt in 2023, while earnings dropped from a 2023 peak of KSh 218B to roughly KSh 187B in 2024 as auction prices slipped.
The chart ranks counties by their share of national tea output for the 2023/24 season.
Kericho and Bomet alone produce 40% of Kenyan tea.
Kericho (122kt) and Bomet (98kt) anchor the western Rift tea economy, supported by altitude, climate and established estate infrastructure.
Coffee — a long structural decline
Trade dashboard →The chart traces clean-coffee-equivalent production from 1985 to 2023.
A 40-year decline that has not stopped.
Coffee output peaked at roughly 134kt in 1985/86 and is now around 50kt, reflecting a long structural decline.
The chart ranks counties by their share of national coffee output for the 2023/24 season.
Mt Kenya counties hold 60% of remaining coffee.
Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Murang'a, Embu and Kiambu form the central highland core of Kenya's remaining coffee footprint.
Coffee output peaked at 134k tonnes in 1985/86 and has been declining for nearly four decades. The reasons are familiar — collapsed cooperative governance, smallholder ageing, low farmgate-to-retail price share, and competition for prime altitude land from horticulture and urban encroachment.
Horticulture & cut flowers
Export destinations →The chart shows horticulture export composition by volume from 2018 to 2024, broken into cut flowers, vegetables and fruits.
Cut flowers still lead, but fruits are the fastest-growing slice.
Cut flowers remain the largest horticulture segment by tonnage. Fruit exports — driven heavily by avocado — have nearly tripled since 2018.
The chart shows the share of cut-flower export volume by declared destination for 2023.
62% of Kenyan flowers go through one Dutch auction.
The Netherlands is not really an end-market — it is the gateway to Europe. Direct UK and German shipments make up a smaller direct share.
Avocado — the breakout crop
Trade dashboard →The chart tracks annual avocado export volumes from 2016 to 2024.
Avocado has 5×'d in eight years.
Exports rose from 27kt in 2016 to roughly 138kt in 2024, propelled by Chinese market access and steady European demand.
Avocado exports have grown roughly five-fold since 2016, propelled by access to the Chinese market (granted 2022) and steady European demand. Kenya is now Africa's largest avocado exporter and one of the world's top 10.