Surplus Strawberry in Plateau, Few Buyers

Jos — If you think that certain imported exotic fruits seen in some of the biggest shopping malls cannot grow in Nigeria, you better have a rethink! Every city in the country can grow something unique. Nigeria is a blessed country with different agro ecological zones having huge potentials.

Strawberry, an exotic fruit, which until now does not receive any serious attention as one of the fruits grown in the country, is now the most important produce that shapes the economic power of the people of Chaha community.

 

The community, located at the outskirt of Vom, Plateau State, gives the heart-shaped fruit the desired attention from the day they discovered it has the potentials to change their fortune and lift them from the shackles of poverty.

This reporter, prompted by the sale of the produce to motorists along Jos-Abuja Road in Jos, traced its origin to Chaha village where everybody seems to have a strawberry farm- although there are few other strawberry farmers in Jos, Plateau State capital.

A farmer does not need to buy the seed or seedlings every farming year. This is because the vines after production can be transferred as seedlings to another plot in the new farming season. This quality leaves farmers with no burden of looking for seed each planting season. Their major burden is manure, fertiliser and market.

Nuhu Samuel is a 29-year-old strawberry farmer. He told the reporter that he got into the farming after he saw his father making money from it. Although he said he cannot tell where his father got the seed from, he got the seedlings from him.

The father of two children stated that he plants in July and harvests in November. He sells in killogramme-N700 to N1, 000 per kilogramme.

Samuel gets 30 to 40 killogrammes from his farm twice a week, which helps him to pocket between N28, 000 to N40, 000. For him water supply to the farm is not much of a problem because some of the mining pods serve as mini irrigation dams that supply water to his farms.

 A farmer does not need to buy the seed or seedlings every farming year. This is because the vines after production can be transferred as seedlings to another plot in the new farming season. This quality leaves farmers with no burden of looking for seed each planting season. Their major burden is manure, fertiliser and market.

They are sold in kilogram with prices ranging from N700 to N1, 000 per kilogramme.

The reporter seeks to know where he sells his produce or if he has challenges selling it, and he said: "We have one man who comes from Abuja to buy the produce from us. We normally take it to him in Vom. Apart from him, some women who sell the produce along the major roads in and around Jos come here to buy."

On how much he makes from it in a season, he said: "It depends, there are seasons that we make between N300, 000 to N400, 000 while in some seasons, I make up to N1 million from my two plots alone."

Isaac Michael is a 22-year-old strawberry farmer in the community. He was working in his farm when the reporter met him. He said that he was inspired to farm by Thomas Choji, who he said started the strawberry farming in the community.

Unlike Samuel who has been farming it for the past five years, Michael is a new comer into strawberry farming after seeing other young farmers of his age making money from it.

"I could not start earlier because I did not save enough money to buy the seedlings because it is too expensive. But July last year, I managed to save money from my cabbage and carrot farm to buy the strawberry seedlings which I planted in this farm."

According to him, each seedling costs N200. He said he has no problem with water supply as his farm is located at the bank of a lake constructed by miners.

Michael is now harvesting four cartons worth of strawberry every week. Each of those cartons contains five killogrammes of the produce. But how much does he sell a killogramme?

"It depends on the forces that shape the market such as glut and scarcity. Between October and December, it is usually very expensive. So we sell for between N900 and N1, 000 a kilo. But now, the product is plenty as you can see. During the heat period-because it is heat that facilitates its growth, we sell for between N700 and N800 per kilogramme."

"Before the season ends in April, I will make N400, 000, I could even make more if I get a better market," the 22-year-old man said.

"But honestly, it is not easy for us to sell it here. If you harvest it and keep it, before tomorrow it will change its colour. You must get the person who wants to buy before you harvest it, if not you can't harvest it and keep it. Unless you have a cooling system like the refrigerator before you can do that. This is a big challenge for us here."

For Patrick Mancha, a 45 year-old-father of five, the idea of starting a strawberry farm came to him when, as a worker on other peoples' farms, he saw how the farmers were making money from it.

With the money he realised from working for others, he established his own farm, which gives him money to feed his family and send his children to some of the expensive schools in Jos.

Mancha said he sells strawberry in cartons, which weigh 5.5 killogrammes at the price of N3, 600. The day the reporter visited the farm, he harvested 70 killogrammes from only one of the three strawberry farms, which he does twice a week.

Conducting the reporter round his farms, Patrick stressed that he will harvest 150 killogrammes if it reaches March which will give him approximately N105, 000 weekly if he sells at the least price of N700 per killogramme.

"Last year I realised N300, 000 from the small farmland I cultivated. This year, I have decided to expand the land to three plots. As you can see, the 70kg I harvested did not include the other farms. If I add those ones I may get 120kg and that will be twice a week."

Choji Emmanuel is one of the biggest strawberry farmers in Chaha. In a chat with the reporter, he stressed that the major challenge of strawberry farmers in the community is lack of market for the produce in Jos.

He told the reporter that he has attended many workshops organised for strawberry farmers on the Plateau but nothing happened afterwards.

The 29-year-old lamented that the community produces strawberry enough to meet any buyer's demand, yet they rely on few individuals and retailers to buy from them.

"We know how to farm strawberry here, but the market is our problem. We want people and companies to know that we have enough of this fruit here. What we need now is just the market."

Emmanuel has been in strawberry production for over six years. He recalled one particular year when he couldn't find buyers for the product, making them to record huge losses.

"We know there are people who need this product somewhere in Nigeria but we don't know how to locate them. I hope one day, some of these people will find us here."

According to him, even though they have Strawberry Farmers Association in the community, the leaders are not educated to help members locate where the markets for their produce lie in the country.

This reporter made effort to speak to the leaders of the association but failed because they were all out of the village trying to find buyers.

Speaking to many farmers in Chaha community it was discovered that they have the same challenge-market for their produce. They want to know where to meet buyers.

Even the government at the state and local levels do not seem to work for the interest of their famers who can make the state a hub for horticulture in Africa. Despite huge potentials created by its unique weather, the Plateau State and its local governments have failed its farmers. Even the federal government failed to see the billions of Naira lying untapped on the Plateau.

For the community, access to good road, link to bulk buyers and basic inputs such as water pumping machines and fertiliser continue to elude them.

Efforts to get the local government authorities and the state commissioner of agriculture to comment on these matters also failed

Source: Allafrica.com

Agric Graduate Training Job

 

Namibia Needs 120 000 Tonnes of Maize Imports

NAMIBIA needs to import about 120 000 tonnes of maize to fill the gap in the market due to poor rainfall.

The Agronomic Board of Namibia's manager of maize and wheat, Antoinette Venter, raised the concern about the poor rainfall received so far in an interview on Monday, noting that the production season is only starting now.

"Namibia has produced very, very little maize locally. We only produced about a maximum of 30 000 tonnes of irrigation maize. But these are only broad projections," she noted.

Namibia's 2015 maize crop was 44% lower compared to 2014's (above-average) output, according to figures released by the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) on Thursday. It noted that around half of all dry land commercial farmers experienced total crop losses as a result of the drought and high temperatures.

  

"An estimated 370 316 people are food insecure and the target of a government drought relief programme," it warned.

South Africa is the biggest victim of the drought. It is the region's main maize producer, but last year output fell 30% below the bumper 2014 season and it may have to import around six million tonnes of maize. Planting of the 2016 cereal crop began later than normal due to delayed rains, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

South Africa has indicated that this El Niño-induced drought is the worst the country has suffered in more than half a century. The El Niño global weather event, which is leading to even worse drought across the region, is already affecting this year's crop. WFP warned that with little or no rain falling in many areas and the window for the planting of cereals closing fast or already closed in some countries, the outlook is "alarming."

"The region is ill prepared for a shock of this magnitude, particularly since the last growing season was also affected by drought. This means depleted regional stocks, high food prices, and substantially increased numbers of food insecure people," the UN agency added.

Meanwhile, local miller Namib Mills announced price increases on all its product categories, effective 25 January 2016.

The price of maize meal products increased by 10%, wheat flour by 6%, mahangu meal by 20% and sugar products by 15%. The price of rice products also increased by 15 to 23% in two categories.

The company said one of the reasons for the price increases was that pressure of the drought in southern Africa had increased maize prices dramatically, as supply declined under the dry conditions.

- Nampa

Source: AllAfrica.com 

Nigerian Farmer Break Into International Market with Smoked Fish

Tunde Sanni, owner of Tee Ess Farms in Lagos, was recently certified by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to produce smoked fish for the U.S

  After years of trying to sell agricultural products internationally, Nigeria’s fish farmers have finally broken into the international market.
Branded smoked fish produced by fish farmers in Lagos State is now selling in the United States. With the success of the smoked fish, branded cashew nuts produced in Enugu are also being evaluated for sale internationally.
The breakthrough comes in part from the success of the Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP), supported by the World Bank. Through CADP, farmers were introduced to new smoking kiln technology that improved fish processing by reducing the smoke level to internationally acceptable standards.

As a result of new techniques, Tunde Sanni, a member of Post-Harvest Commercial Fish Processor Commodity Interest Group (CIG) and owner of Tee Ess Farms in Lagos, was recently certified by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to produce smoked fish for the U.S.
“Before the CADP intervention, processors were producing 150 kilograms of locally smoked fish per week, using excess charcoal with all its negative health implications and entry barrier to the international market,” Sanni said. “After the technology intervention and participation in capacity-building activities facilitated by CADP, our smoking methods just got better.”
With CADP and working with experts and consultants from the United States, processors have created branded packaging for filleted and whole smoked fish. The packages have barcodes that enhance competitiveness and protection while establishing corporate identity in the market.

“My farm also smokes fish for other farmers according to international standards and they package the fish with their label,” Sanni said.
Presently, a pack of 500 grams of smoked catfish purchased from Nigeria at $12.50, sells for between $15 and $20 internationally making it a potentially profitable business.
“We are pleased to see that with appropriate support and incentives, Nigerian farmers can break through sophisticated markets such as the US market,” said Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, World Bank Country Director for Nigeria. “This is very encouraging and going forward, we would like to see many more examples that will help make the Nigerian Government’s vision of transforming agriculture from subsistence level to a business venture a reality.”

The CADP program operates in five states: Cross River, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano and Lagos focusing on palm oil, cocoa, fruit trees, poultry, aquaculture, dairy and staples such as maize and rice. The smoking kiln technology has been adopted in Lagos State by 168 farmers – 71 males and 97 females – and more than 2,215 jobs were created as a result of the new technology.

Aderemi Giwa, a member of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is excited about this new development in agriculture, and described the inroad into the International and US markets as a major accomplishment for Nigeria the fish industry.
“This new smoking technology, with the support of World Bank through the Commercial
Agricultural Development Project, has really moved fish farming in Lagos State to a new and unparalleled dimension,” Giwa said. “Farmers can now export directly to the US market, thereby boosting our economy and at the same time increasing the standard of living of Nigerian fish farmers.”

The project is supported by the International Development Association (IDA), and aims to upgrade subsistence agriculture to commercial ventures focusing on small and medium scale commercial farmers and agro-processors.

Source: http://www.worldbank.org 

How to Start Fish Farming in Nigeria

There are so many information on the internet on "How to Start Fish Farming in Nigeria" but few are detailed enough to really assist aspiring fish farmer to get started. I will be endeavor to make this article as detailed as possible and hope that other experienced fish farmer will add to it as we try to answer people's questions through commenting.

One of the most popular farming in Nigeria is fish farming and for good reasons. Gone are the days when the only means of getting fish is by catching it in the local rivers and ponds through trial and errors. Today, the modern farm practice has made it possible to grow fish in the farms and control the input.

If you are thinking of business to start now, I recommend you start Catfish Farming in Nigeria. If you are an existing farmer and you are looking for expanding your farm capacity, I'd encourage you add fish farming to your farm. Fish farming (especially catfish) is most compatible with poultry farming as you can use the poultry drops to make the feeds for your fish.

Benefits of Fish Farming

1. Fishery products is by far the most popular animal products in the market, constituting more than 60% of meat products in the Nigerian market.

2. Fish is one of the highest source of protein. Fish is a low-fat high quality protein that is filled with omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins such as D and B2 (riboflavin). Fish is also very rich in calcium and phosphorus and is equally a great source of minerals, such as iron, zinc, iodine, magnesium, and potassium.

3. Fish sells faster than any other animal products in the market and is relatively cheaper than meats, making it the number one choice when it comes to affordability.

4. Fish grows very fast as practices in fish farming makes it possible for farmers to increase the fastness of their fish growth by giving them certain feeds, ensuring that you harvest and sell within short period of time.

5. Fish is the biggest source of Omega-3 fatty acids which is extremely beneficial to human heart; Omega-3 helps to keep our heart and brain very healthy. Since bodies don't produce Omega-3 fatty acids, the only source through which we can get it is by what we eat, that is where fish comes to the rescue.

6. Fish farming is very profitable. With proper planning and good management, N3 million investment in fish farming could easily result to N4 million of pure profit within six months.

7. Fish farm does not cause any environmental hazard. Unlike poultry farming, you can setup fish farm anywhere, including residential areas. If you have a specious compound, you can easily setup a small fish farm within your backyard without any regulatory precaution.

Risks and Challenges in Fish Farming

1. Fish is very sensitive to manage and a slight mistake could result to degenerated growth of your fish or even death which may cause massive revenue loss.

2. Setting up fish farm is capital intensive, much more than that of poultry and snail farm. Setting up fish farm requires more careful planning and much capital input. A relatively small fish farm may take up to N500,000 to setup, while bigger ones takes millions of naira.

3. Due to the cost of production, fish produced from the farm is priced higher than those caught from the rivers and ponds by fishermen. Therefore, if there are good quantity of fisherman's fish in the market, you may find it difficult to sell as people would prefer the cheaper ones.

4. There is no byproduct in fishery unlike poultry where even the drop can be harvested and sold to other farmers and make extra profit. In fishery, all you get is the flesh. 

Types of Fish You Can Farm

Haven seen the benefits as well as the risks involved in fish farming, let's now proceed to decide which specie of fish we want to farm. Below are some of the most popular fish species that is suitable for Aquaculture.

1. Cat Fish - Even though Catfish is not the most popular fish in Nigeria, this fish species is by far the most cultivated in Nigeria. One thing good about catfish is that it is one of the easiest fish species to cultivate. So, people naturally flow to the direction of fish specie they found to be the easiest to cultivate.

2. Tilapia - Second most popular fish in Nigeria's aquaculture industry, Tilapia is a fish species that lives in fresh shallow water. Tilapia is very easy to cultivate and very popular in Nigerian market, it reproduces very rapidly and grows fast too.

3. Mackerel (Titus) -  This is by far the most popular fish in Nigerian market but so sad it's not farmed. All Mackerel Fish are "wild caught" but some farmer in Nigeria are considering the possibility of creating artificial salty water that will be similar to sea water where mackerel can only survive. Can this deep blue sea fish specie be cultivated artificially? Only time will tell but for now, you have to focus your attention to Catfish and Tilapia.

What You Need to Get Started

1. Secure a Land - Any location is good since fish doesn't cause any environmental disturbance. Look for land where you can get it cheap and buy. Depending on the capacity you wants to operate on, half plot of land is just good enough for average fish farm.

However, you may go for something bigger like full plot or two if you can afford it probably for convenience sake. If you already have a compound with leftover space you thing can accommodate two or three ponds, you may use it.

2. Construct Ponds - You need to engage the service of expert pond construction engineer or you go to another fish farm to get the specification and construction requirements. The plumbing work must be properly done to ensure proper drainage.

Example of what fish ponds looks like. You need to visit fish farms to see it

3. Dig a Borehole - Adequate water supply is the lifeblood of fish farm and lack of it may result to disaster because water need to be changed on regular interval. Naturally available sources of water such as borehole and river water is the most suitable. Rain water and tap water from chemically treated source is not recommended for fish cultivation.

4. Overhead Tank - This is the water reservoir from which water is supplied to your ponds. This tank has to be connected to your ponds through plumbing system to make it convenient for water to flow into your ponds when needed.

5. Juvenile Fish - Get your juvenile from another farm that specializes in supplying it. You need to go for the high yield specie of catfish or tilapia and make sure you are getting it from a healthy farm.

6. Get Training - Not the kind of training you get from one day seminars; you need to get attached to a fish farm for proper apprenticeship. For you to properly learn this trade, you need at least two months training on this.

Remember that your investment is at stake, trial and error is not good in business except you have unlimited funds to experiment with.

Feasibility Study for a Standard Fish Farm

This feasibility study prepared for a catfish farm capacity of 10,000 and fingerlings of high breed catfish where to be stocked. The expenses from pond construction to marketing is considered. The farm is to have 10 concrete ponds of flow through system and each pond is to contains 1,000 stocked catfish.

Cost of constructing each pond is as follows.

Each pond is 3m x 2.5m by 1.4m, each pond consumes 210 blocks and each bag of cement for 30 blocks. Hence 210 x 10 = 2,100 blocks. 2,100/30 = 70 bags of cement needed. 2000 x 70 = 140,000 naira.

4trips of sand used =7,000x4 = N28,000

2trips of gravel = 32,000x 2 = N64,00

Cost of labour = N150,00

Cost of plumbing (inlet and outlet facility) = N100,000.

Cost of bore hole = N150,000.

Cost of treatment = N50,000.

Cost of high breed fingerlings 30x10,000 = N300,000.

Cost of feeding from day one to maturity stage is 200 bags of foreign feed = N1,000,000.

After the average weight of the fish was 1.7kg. And it was sold at 800 naira each. The output was 800x9800 fishes, due to 200 mortality. 800 x 9800 = N7,840,000.

Input is N3.25'million. The profit is N4.59 million after six months of culture." Following this cost analysis, you can easily invest N3 million and expect a massive turnover of N4 million with six months it will take for you to harvest and sell.

There is no doubt that fish farming is very lucrative and profitable in Nigeria. You need to get it right by drawing complete business plan and following it to the later. You need to apply good management skills and follow the acceptable standard. If you do all these, you are sure to make good profit from your fish farming business in Nigeria.

For more detail on how to set up your own fish farm contact 

Farmdoksltd on

Phone number: 08077495387
Email:  famdoksltd@gmail.com  

Source: Wealthcreation 

INVESTING IN AGRICULTURE: BABARIANS AT THE FARM GATE

IN THE next 40 years, humans will need to produce more food than they did in the previous 10,000 put together. But with sprawling cities gobbling up arable land, agricultural productivity gains decreasing, and demand for biofuels increasing, supply is not keeping up with demand. Clever farmers, scientists and entrepreneurs are bursting with ideas. But they need money to make this jump.

Financiers more often found buying and selling companies have cottoned on to the opportunity. Farm gates have traditionally been closed to capital markets: nine in ten farms are held by families. But demography is forcing a shift: the average age of farmers in Europe, America and New Zealand is now in the late fifties. They often have no successor, because offspring do not want to farm or cannot afford to buy out family members. In addition, adopting new technologies and farming at ever-greater scale require the sort of capital few farmers have, even after years of bumper crop prices.

Institutional investors such as pension funds see farmland as fertile ground to plough, either doing their own deals or farming them out to specialist funds. Some act as landlords by buying land and leasing it out. Others buy plots of low-value land, such as pastures, and upgrade them to higher-yielding orchards. Investors who are keen on even bigger risks and rewards flock to places such as Brazil, Ukraine and Zambia, where farming techniques are often still underdeveloped and potential productivity gains immense.

Farmland has been a great investment over the past 20 years, certainly in America, where annual returns of 12% caused some to dub it “gold with a coupon”. In America and Britain, where tax incentives have distorted the market, it outperformed most major asset classes over the past decade, and with low volatility to boot (see chart). Those going against the grain warn of a land-price bubble. Believers argue that increasing demand and shrinking supply—as well as urbanisation, poor soil management and pressure on water systems that are threats to farmland—mean the investment case is on solid ground.

It is not just the asset appreciation and yields that attract outside capital, says Bruce Sherrick of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: as important is the diversification to portfolios that farmland offers. It is uncorrelated with paper assets such as stocks and bonds, has proven relatively resistant to inflation, and is less sensitive to economic shocks (people continue to eat even during downturns) and to interest-rate hikes. Moreover, in the aftermath of the financial crisis investors are reassured by assets they can touch and sniff.

Some are already getting their boots dirty. In 2009 Hassad, part of Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund, asked Bydand Global Agriculture to buy nearly 50 farms in Australia and merge them into a single investment portfolio. Terrapin Palisades, a private-equity firm, bought a dairy company and some vineyards and tomato fields in California, and converted all to grow almonds, whose price has soared as the Chinese have gone nuts for them. Such conversions require up-front capital and the ability to survive without returns for years.

The private-equity approach can take the form of simple improvements, such as changing irrigation from antiquated dykes and canal networks to automatic spray systems: these are the equivalent of picking low-hanging fruit. Pricey robots can boost milk per cow by 10-15%. Using “big-data” analytics to plant and cultivate seeds can push crop yields up 5%. “This is an industry where the gap between the top and bottom quartile is greater than anywhere else,” says Detlef Schoen of Aquila Capital, an alternative-investment firm.

And yet the 36 agriculture-focused funds, with $15 billion under management, pale in comparison to the 144 funds focused on infrastructure ($89 billion) and 473 targeting real estate ($163 billion), according to Preqin, a data provider. TIAA-CREF, an American financial group, is a market leader with $5 billion in farmland, from Australia to Brazil, and its own agricultural academic centre at the University of Illinois. Canadian pension funds and Britain’s Wellcome Trust are among those bolstering their farming savvy.

Most investors are put off by the sector’s peculiar risks and complexities. Weather, commodity prices, soil health, water access, dietary fads and animal health are not the forte of the average pension-fund investment officer. Political risks abound: cash-strapped governments in Europe and America may (belatedly) get around to cutting farm subsidies. In poor countries, land titles may give outsiders dubious protection—if those countries even allow foreign ownership of land in the first place.

Some liken the sector to real estate and infrastructure 20 years ago. It lacks indices, consultant reports and track records. But unlike skyscrapers or pipelines, farming offers few of the multi-billion-dollar deals that are needed to entice mega-investors.

For more money to flow in, financiers and farmers will have to learn a lot more about each other. Money managers need to get their hands dirty and find out more about crops. Only a handful have the expertise needed; farmers gleefully share stories of Wall Street types wondering how chicks are planted. And farmers can do more to attract capital, for example by seeking out financial deals where investors’ incentives are aligned with their own, such as through joint ventures.

Investors need to separate the wheat from the chaff, too. Farm investing requires patience; it is ill-suited to flipping and trading. But those willing to climb over the barriers could reap big rewards. The investment thesis is as simple as they come, as Mark Twain realised long ago: “Buy land, they’re not making it any more.”

source: www.economist.com

Africa: Improving Food Security Requires the Upscaling of Public Private Partnerships (ppps)

OPINION

Mistrust between public and private actors needs to end to implement successful PPPs.

"Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) - a very fashionable buzzword - can play a critical role in food security but turning them into an effective operational approach is another story. There is still a lot of mistrust between public and private actors. PPPs that are successful in both local and foreign settings, as well as small and large private operators, are not easily developed and implemented," says Francesco Rampa, the head of Food Security for the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM).

He added: "Improving food and nutrition security worldwide, and in particular transforming agriculture in Africa, requires not only more effective and consistent policies and investments, but also the scaling up of inclusive multi-stakeholder partnerships."

In Africa, tensions are increasing between African smallholders - who believe producing organic food via multi-cropping is the solution for better food and nutrition security - and foreign companies - who tend to believe only large-scale mono-cropping can produce enough food, with fortification providing the supplements for improving nutrition, if or where needed;" he continues.

"Also questionable is whether most PPPs are commercially sustainable, with most examples of PPPs in African agriculture being pilots, strongly motivated by corporate social responsibility, and whether these models can be upscaled to serve base-of-the-pyramid consumers in a profitable and sustainable way. Finally, there are growing concerns about the risk that donors' initiatives to involve investors from their own countries in African agriculture PPPs are used as self-interested economic diplomacy at the expense of sustainable development objectives and local private sector growth.

Source: Allafrica.com