Shameful!!! When Shoprite is importing Ordinary WaterMelon from South Africa while our Own is rotting away on the farm.
To even hear, that they also import plantain via one SBC Company from Ghana is more shameful.....

I keep telling many of my folks, there is so much to do and earn a decent living in agriculture, especially now that we imported almost everything, from tomatoes to pepper to even common vegetables. Have tried to check most of the legumes and vegetables displayed at Shoprite and could not but attest to the fact that importation has eaten us deep.. From cucumber to common oranges, all na importation. Yet we keep complaining about dollar exchange rate, when in actual fact, we don't have any business with dollar, rather people should come and buy from us.

I believe so much in Agriculture, it's the only business with little risk if all conditions are fairly stable. God has blessed us with a fair weather and it would only take us to make the good use of this god-given gift with abundance hectares of arable land.

It is a generally acclaimed and accepted fact, that food drives the world; apart from clean water, access to adequate food is the primary concern for most people on earth. The success stories of new businesses in the agricultural sector are increasing and word is spreading fast about the great potential in this sector. As a result, agricultural entrepreneurship and commercial farming are becoming increasingly trendy – even among the young.

In Kenya for example, ‘doing agribusiness’ is becoming hip; an increasing number of university students are skipping the job search to build agribusinesses instead.

I have had my sheer experience as a young farmer while growing up. My dad being a consummate and a passionate subsistent farmer himself is one man that has planted all sort of farms crops from beans, to yam to cocoyam to banana and almost everything you could think of, as a local farmer. No thanks to Abacha Era that makes life so difficult for Teachers then, but from this challenge i have come to realise that he practically do not spend a dine from his meagre salary then except paying of bills.

Like i could still recall, i use to distribute "Ewedu" early in the morning (immediately after fajhr prayer) to all canteen and restaurants in our neighbourhood then. After i must have kitted up in my neatly dressed School uniform, with the ewedu and efo in bagco bag. I use to realise nothing less than 500naira within 30minutes on daily basis which my father use to keep for my daily stipends and transport to school. Hardship! one may say but challenging and Interesting.

I remember i discussed with him the last time of my interest to go into Agrobusiness as an "Entrepreneur" and i can still see the interest in him even in his late 60's, as he advised me and even told me about the booming "watermelon" planting a friend told him.

I wish Mr President can make available soft loans and provide economy policies and frameworks that would encourage Nigerian youths to give Agriculture a trial, especially now that the Oil boom is fast going into extinction. Check world Agricultural Map and Statistics, you see America as leader in Corn Production, Thailand in Rice, Indonesian in Palm oil, India and Uganda are the first and the second largest producer of banana in the world, How pitiable! Most worrisome is that Nigeria is not in any top 10 from all of the above.

In 1950s and 60s before the advent of oil prior to Nigerian independence various regions in the country were predominately engaged in comparative production ranging from food baskets, cash crops to timber and also solid minerals. In the then western region were known mainly for cocoa, kola nut, cashew nut production etc, while the north were been known for herds, skin, dairy products, cotton and groundnut which Kano was then popularly known for its groundnut pyramid. Also in the east were palm produce.

At Ibadan a high rise building was built and called "Cocoa House." This building signifies the hegemony in power of production and comparative advantage enjoyed by then western region in cocoa production. The building was formerly called "Ile Awon Agbe" (i.e. "House of Farmers". It was the tallest building inAfrica in the 1960s. The regional administration of Chief Obafemi Awolowo was proud to tell the world, in the era before the Oil Boom, that Cocoa House was built entirely from proceeds of international trade in agricultural commodities such as cocoa, rubber and timber.

Even after 1967/1970 civil war however; the country was still making a descent living on foreign exchange through these products but sadly the story is no longer what it use to be, as things have suddenly gone bad.

We can do better with Agriculture and Farming if we have the enabling environment and if our youths realised farm life is not as rusty as it seems, we can always make it trendy and lively if we believe in it.

Micronut's Echoes on Greenland.

lalasticlala, ishlove and seun.

ITS A WAKEUP CALL !!!

Sighs

whitecloth:
Its not really an insult sir, it comes with soo many messages, depending on how you view it. one f the meaning is that what Nigeria is producing is what we are eating and so on.
We just have to step up.
That's all.

Thank's for your contribution, on the above, i bet to disagree, if only you know how many of those watermelon are getting rotten away in the north, i have seen how tomatoes get wasted in benue state, also in ondo state/osun (Govt reserves area of Ife North), plantain are so cheap because farmers do no see who to buy. If i may ask how do poor farmers keep producing more if no local retailers like shoprite and other big groceries outlets do not patronise them? Ofcos, the would be discouraged.
My point is this, if we can no export, atleast we can eat it. Are you telling me agroproducts is more abundant in ghana than Nigeria that these people would have to be visiting ghana for banana? I disagree sir... This people are just wicked. How many of them patronise our local fish farms? what of our poultry..because they make so much profit from importation.

micronut:


Thank's for your contribution, on the above, i bet to disagree, if only you know how many of those watermelon are getting rotten away in the north, i have seen how tomatoes get wasted in benue state, also in ondo state/osun (Govt reserves area of Ife North).

Am not disagreeing with you atall, but I just asked a Hausa guy beside me who told me that its the watermelon that they plant in the north that find there way through to the south and possibly east.
Maybe if you take a very good look at it you'll find out that its what we plant that we eat, not many people are planting for exporting.
like I said, its a wake up call for all of us.
Thanks.

whitecloth:

Am not disagreeing with you atall, but I just asked a Hausa guy beside me who told me that its the watermelon that they plant in the north that find there way through to the south and possibly east.
Maybe if you take a very good look at it you'll find out that its what we plant that we eat, not many people are planting for exporting.
like I said, its a wake up call for all of us.
Thanks.

It is not really about planting for exportation that is the issue here but rather planting enough to satisfy our own needs here so that there won't be a need to import. We have a population of more than 140,000,000 and every one of these people will need to eat. There are not many active agro marketers and this is one of the reasons why a huge amount of crops get spoilt even before they are transported to the market.

Other factors are involved too.

Let us be realistic with ourselves, yes we locally produce bananas/plantains but how many banana/plantain packaging companies do we have in Nigeria? There are so many zig-zags in the agricultural landscape and any aspect we can straighten, there in lies our opportunity. We are so used to harvesting without much care, load everything into the trucks and head to the market.

One needs to watch this short video as it is the same video that did inspire some Ugandan youths to come together to start packaging plantain which is sent to some Upscale supermarkets in Nairobi where foreigners buys them off quickly.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7n1nb_0lns