topsy23:


Below are the breakdown of my proposal :

ANTE ROOM
wall light 2
spot light 2
13A double socket 2
TV 1
AC 1

VISITOR TOILET
ceiling light 1

SITTING ROOM
wall light 3
spot light 4 or 6
13A double socket 4
13A single socket 2
TV 1
AC 1

ROOM ONE
wall light 2
spot light 4
13A double socket 2
13A single socket 2
TV 1
AC 1

TOILET ONE
ceiling light 1
water heater 1
Shaver light 1

ROOM TWO
wall light 2
spot light 4
13A double socket 2
13A single socket 2
TV 1
AC 1

TOILET TWO
ceiling light 1
water heater 1
Shaver light 1

ROOM THREE
wall light 2
spot light 4
13A double socket 2
13A single socket 2
TV 1
AC 1

TOILET THREE
ceiling light 1
water heater 1
Shaver light 1


LOBBY
ceiling light 4

EXTERNAL WALL LIGHT 8

Check if there is any addition or subtraction before I proceed with the quotation

Also your email address or whatsapp number will be needed.

Hello Topzy, pls send to okikialonge1@gmail.com with your WhatsApp number pls

My order was never delivered.

Well done bro

Requirement 5:

Retting Tank: This is the tank in which you will soak your fibre for 20days so as to get it softened and get fine fibre. The retting tank is not purpose built hence a used Jon leaking container can be used for this purpose.

Gradually we are getting close to raining season and would-be kenaf farmers should have identified the portion of land they want to cultivate. Note that your farm should be sited not far from where you can get water for some of your operations especially spraying, bathing and retting.

Keep awake as we are planning something for interested farmers in the coming months.

Happy new year people.

ThisIsBaobab

ayufun:
There have been early rainfall in some parts of Nigeria this year. Another downpour experienced in Ondo, Ondo state in early hours of today.

What signal does it make?
What should farmers take note this year?
What's the view of Meteorologists ?

It is a good beginning but a wise farmer will not start cultivation on this note except he has a borehole to support should the rains suddenly stop. This rain is not reliable.
ThisIsBaobab

The rains are coming in gradually, document what you have in your area.

Ijebu/ Lagos heavy showers on 20/01/19

Lagos again 23/01/19

hopevalley:

Let me tell you the gospel truth. Agribusiness cannot be profitable without exporting your agroproducts. Click on the link on my signature for more information on this.

The smell of dollar is good and the value is excellent but it will be unwise to sell your food while your children are dying of hunger

Requirement 4, get ready your inputs.

Inputs here refers to fertilizer, seed , herbicides and insecticides. In fact before you pick up your seed you must settle your fertilizer and pre-emergence herbicide supplier. This is because you can't afford to waste time and money weeding kenaf. Once you get the population and spacing right and you apply your herbicide immediately after planting you will not need to weed.

Keep following as we prepare for first massive planting of kenaf in Nigeria by 2019.

ThisIsBaobab

Friends, it's been a while that I documented my progress.
We have harvested our beans and the outcome was below expectation, partly because of poor plant population and majorly because of excessive application of insecticide at the first instance.

It is worthy of note that direction of use as recommendationed on insecticide bottles may not help you. Get correct chemical applications from practising farmers.

We have harvested our cowpea, it is surprising how much you are going to spend on post harvest processing when you do not have necessary machinery. My experience shows that having necessary machines will reduce you cost and especially your stress by at least 60%.

Our castor is still in the farm, struggling on a land that has lost its fertility completely. We are not expecting much from it and we would manage our expenditure to maintain minimum cost till we see the end of it.

This represent the end of the diary of a first time farmer. Now I am no longer an inexperienced farmer, as what I have gained by practise and observation, can never be thought in the four walls of harvard.

Are we now ending our agricultural business? Far be it. Rather we are starting with a renewed strength and from the point of experience. Join me in future post as I will be sharing with you my success story (by the grace of God).

ThisIsBaobab

confluence:
Babbao1, I was at my maize farm , thank God for the rain, I will need to weed once again for the cassava to have healthy growth

congratulations on your progress

JerryZhang:
Hello, please leave your email, we will make a quotation to you
Email:jerryzhangshuliy@gmail.com

Send me your quotation: cedaragribusiness@gmail.com

Regards

Requirement 3 before you plant

Get yourself some required machineries or be sure that when you need them they will be available.
For instance you must have a planter, whether semi mechanical or completely automated planter. Semi mechanical is affordable and one can start with it. Get your boom sprayer ready. Ordinary mower can harvest kenaf, I prefer the back mounted type it makes the job neat - get your harvester ready.
If your interest is fibre production. Get your decorticator ready and your retting tanks. Don't dare start without them no matter how passionate you are same goes for seed and core production.

More to come.

ThisIsBaobab

MDDarah84:


Kudos,great man.You are very much on the right path.

All and all said

The toughest challenge I have experienced and still experiencing as a practical farmer is managing labour.

How do we really solve this?

The first solution I was able to come up with is to have at least 1 or 2 laborers that will work with you permanently on any of your project. All you need is to provide them with accommodation and agree a yearly payment with them. Then one can get extra hands to support such workers when there are major operations to be done.

Let me share with you the need to be objective in every decision you take in farming and why you must be deliberate in your actions and follow your guts feeling.

I know quite well now that beyond passion, farming should be approached as a business and the objective of every business is to make profit. Every action taken by every business man is deliberate and directed towards making profit.

In my own case, after we had issues with starting, because our tractor operator rejected the land that we got, my objective was affected and I shifted from the vision that I had of a neat, orderly and productive farm to just starting and starting anyhow.

The change in objective and neglect of my gut feeling is affecting our farm today. The portion of land where we have our castor is no longer fertile. I saw it when we were apportioned the land, but because of the hurry to start I paid no attention. Hindsight now, I could have rejected the land outrightly or plant only cowpea, or improve the soil with chicken dung before planting began. Above all, I have no regret because this has prepared me for future actions even though it means loosing hundreds of thousands such error cannot repeat itself.
The lesson here, if the land is not fertile and you are not willing to spend a fortune to improve it, do not plant there. Seek for another land, this country is just too blessed and as such anywhere you go you will see land. Also avoid haste. In fact most things done in a hurry turns out to become sin. Keep you goal constant. Your goal is to make profit, allow that guide your decisions and actions, not just your passion.

ThisIsBaobab

Can you believe that we are still battling with weeds? My experience with weeds shows why you must do everything possible to prepare your land very well before planting but I thank God for this experience and for even doing as much as I did, because what I learned as a result of size and how we started couldn't have been possible otherwise.

We successfully completed weeding our cowpea farm but even as I write some portion of our castor farm is still uncleared same with a little portion that we earmarked for consumtion.

My Landlord who has been helping me too monitor the farm tried but he's not totally committed. He supplied the labour and those labour would work for a day or 2 and go elsewhere or back to their primary masters. This really slowed down our work.
The last person that I am still working with said he does not know his number off hand, and besides he keeps his phone in the village hence I needed to rely on my landlord to get across to him. The guy promised to bring 3 other guys with himself to do the job, 2 of the guys can me only ones in the evening and since then they ceased from coming.
The frustration from farm hands has remained a major challenge, even when you are willing to pay they are not ready to work.Hence our battle with the completion of the weeding continues.

What i learnt from this situation is that you must have your own farm manager if you will not be in the farm always and you must have at least 1 or 2 farm workers to make your work successful. If I were to be in the farm daily I would have followed up on my labour till my job is concluded. I would have known their issues and quickly proffer solutions to make their work environment condusive. For instance my landlord is a farmer also and needed to go about solving his own problems. It was while I interacted with my laborer on Saturday that he told me that the people he brought in stopped coming because of transport fare, that if I could get them a place to stay till the work is concluded they would come back. By the time I got the information 5 days had already gone, manager was not aware because he would not have sufficient time to ask questions and interact with them, those guys couldn't come back again apparently they have gotten another engagement.
The need to have our own farm manager who will give daily activity report and provide proper monitoring cannot be overemphasized. Similarly the need to have at least 2 permanent labour for our kind of operations is not negotiable. That actually accounted for my calculation to start with 10hectares so that we would be big enough to take on staff, but all in all I am happy we started and these many issues validate my thoughts and assumptions of what could happen. We shall overcome.

ThisIsBaobab

Willie2015:
- Where are the off takers of Kenaf Product ? Not available
- Where are the processing plants ? Almost not existing,
- Fierce competition from synthetic fibre and jute bag imports is a major factor. It is cheaper to import jute bags from China, Malaysia India etc
-We dont have a national policy on Kenaf Development ...too bad
- Agricultural Policy Overlap, Inconsistencies and Reversals is a major factor - we all know the cassava bread story !
- Poor implementation of Agric policies for the few ones on ground.

Dis sector is as good as dead.... My 2 cents

Alot is going on in this sector at the moment. The sector was dead before because of the influx of synthetic bags in the 1960s. This led to the closure of 2 jute bag processing plants in the country.
Today, international communities have enforced the use of AgroSack (jute bag) because Agricultural products bagged with synthetic sacks loose their freshness and are badly affected.
A quick reactions to your opinions. The Kenaf table at the federal ministry of Agriculture has been resuscitated. IAR&T, FIRO, and Raw materials research institute are all actively involved in the current development in Kenaf. For the first time Nigeria made 500kg kenaf seed available for multiplication in 2017. This year the seeds have increased in quantity and available for farmers use.
With respect to off takers, we currently have jute bag manufacturers in the country who currently import fibre for their production. There is export market as well which is quite large and some people are already taking advantage of if.
Competition from synthetic fibre is no longer a problem because products like cocoa, cashew exported with synthetic fibre will be returned to the owner.
National policy on Kenaf is undergoing reviews but progress cannot wait till such come to being. Kenaf development is private sector driven because of its profitability. Nigeria is not an exemption, Kenaf Producers, processors and marketers Association of Nigeria started the promotion and government of Nigeria is doing so much to support the development.
Above all, the development of this product in Nigeria is just coming up and its end depends on us all.

Rainfall in Ikeja - 22/11/2018

Requirement no 2 before you plant.

Get a firm off take agreement:
whether you are planting to sell locally or for export, you must first sought out the market before you plant.You cannot eat Kenaf, the buyers are quite few, the application is much. If you plant Kenaf on a thousand hectares one single buyer can purchase all and still ask for more. But without a buyer do not plant.

More to come.

ThisIsBaobab

In the next few write ups I will be listing what you need to know/have before you commence Kenaf farming. Some of the requirements are pivotal without which you MUST not even attempt to start so as to avoid discouragement and failure.

1. Your objective must be clear.
I am yet to see a farmer that is not passionate, but passion alone cannot sustain you for so long. Farming in commercial quantity, especially a product meant for industrial use cannot be approached as a hobby. It is a serious business, and in business the broad objective is to make profit. So in this kenaf farming let profit making be your guiding light as passion alone will fizzle out sooner or later.
Kenaf is a product with many applications, before you sow your seed be very clear about the purpose for planting. Are you planting for Feed production, bast fibre, core or seed. The purpose will determine how to plant, specie to be planted, for how long, even the machines to put in place and your expected cost of production.

Read more requirements in my next writeup.

ThisIsBaobab

Rainfall, Lagos island this morning- 15/11/2018

Juliana7:
@op, i hope u have secured ur market before u start planting next year

Definitely it's the first step as kenaf is not a product to be sold in the open market. It is usually produced for specific customers.

Light showers at Kobape ogun state after 15 days - evening on 10/11/2018

I got a new person in the village to assist me monitor operations in the farm. The man presented himself as a trustworthy fellow but today I realized he too needs to be supervised.

Our battle with weed is still ongoing. We have nearly completed weeding our cowpea farm. While the castor farm weeding is pending. The new manager who happened to be my landlord or better still agent that introduced me to the land owner, began to help me in disbursement of funds to workers.

We commenced by paying N800/half a plot of land. On Tuesday the man Called me that the workers suddenly increased their wages from 800 to 1000 claiming that the weeds were high, I was angry but what else would I do. After all I cannot weed the farm alone and time is far spend for us to look out for another set of people. I then asked the workers to continue that I would sort them out.
My manager said he had measured the ramaining part of the beans and came up with 8 portions. I sent him money to pay when the guys conclude. Lo and behold when I got to the farm today, some portion of the beans farm was not cleared and my manager pretended that he was not aware that the guys have done 8 portions though.

He brought some people to clear our castor farm at 800 naira per portion (a portion is 60*60) . I opted for charging the entire castor farm about 2 hectares for 32000.

I will give more update shortly.

ThisIsBaobab

Ayokunleayoolashakirudeen:
Since you mentioned kenaf, I've been studying alot about it. a crop that matures in 4 month, and has massive biomass production must definitely be infinitely useful. My head has been spinning with ideas. Can I know what it costs to get the seeds?
Also, how susceptible is the plant to pest and disease attack?

The maturity days depends on what you are producing for, for fibre it takes 75days to mature and 4months if you are producing seed.
The seed is sold for N30,000 per 10kg bag from the adsociation. I hope the price comes down next year.
The plant is fairly hardy and does not really come down to any disease and the maturity period is quite short

Light showers in Lagos yesterday - 05/11/218

confluence:
Sorry about the mess, next time when it comes to spraying of farm, no matter how busy I am I supervised it so as to avoid stories that touch the heart, because I have learnt lessons from a senior colleague who experience the mess

Bro, I learnt in a very hard way

Friends I have been very busy at work and in the farm hence my inability to update the thread for some days. K

Last week and up till now we were battling with weeds as a result of controllable error we made at the beginning.

My first farm hand Mr. L did me a lot of injustice, coupled with the fact that the farm manager did not do a thorough job.

Mr. L was introduced to me because he helped our association to plant Kenaf last year. He came in to my farm to help us plant our products, castor, cowpea and kenaf. He was brought in because of his expertise in planting kenaf.

We commenced planting with cowpea. One hectare of cowpea contains 126000 stands if precision planting is engaged with one seed per hole. I communicated my expectation to Mr. L and he promised to give me result. I asked him to plant one seed per hole at specified spacing. He started planting with 3 other guys and I left them in the farm, going to my office. On my way I thought within myself how can this guys achieve result with the high plant population unlike castor that contains like 18000 plant population per hecyare. I was skeptical but we had to forge on as I couldn't see an alternative at that moment and we were bent on planting.

The following day before going to work I went to the farm again. This time the farm manager was around. I asked my guys, how many seeds do you plant per hole and hope you adhered strictly to my instruction? Mr. L and his team confirmed my fears, they had been planting 2 to 4 seeds per hole. The guy even asked my farm manager that right from generations past seeds have been planted in multiples to guarantee germination. My farm Manger confirmed his words but told him to follow intrusions as given by the owner of the farm. The guy said if they plant 1 seed per hole the entire farm will be full of cowpea.i told them not to worry that if my intrusions were followed strictly I know the expected outcome and told them that maximum seed per hole where mistakes happen should not be more than 2 seeds.
Friends, when plants sprouted, the cowpea farm was not what I planned for. There were places where we had 8 seeds, some 10seeds just because they needed the seeds to finish as soon as possible. I did not study psychology but I know a little about how the mind of man works. I challenged Mr. L he pleaded but said it should be errors from his colleagues. Thus we lost plant population. The second cowpea farm was better in terms of seeds per hole but they missed it badly in terms of spacing. 20kg seeds that was supposed to be planted on 1hectare was planted on almost 2 hectares.
The cost of planting was also very high. I thank God we didn't plant Kenaf because if they couldn't plant beans successfully how would they have planted Kenaf that is supposed to be 200,000 stands per hectare. It would have been a great mess.
Mr. L opted to help spray my preemergence herbicide to help in weed control. He charged N3000 per hectare which I agreed to pay. I told my farm manager to stay with the guys, ensure they mix chemicals in his presence in a drum before he leaves them to work. I left the farm shortly after because they intended to spray in the afternoon after planting. Guys, you wouldn't beleive that my farm manager left the farm less than 30mins aft er me. What happened to my chemicals I do not know but we are spending money all over again because weeds kept growing almost at the same rate with the crops.
At the hindsight now, there are various planting machines I could have used to achieve effective plant population and at least 85% efficiency and more than 70% reduction in labour cost. Now I realized that i should have asked the existing farmers in the village the preemergence herbicide that is effective for weed control in such community and I should have personally supervised when chemicals were mixed. I should also have asked how land preparation is done in the community.
Most of the mistakes above are learning points and I don't see them happening again in my future endeavours.

okoroemeka:
its all about good agricultural practice but I do rather manage 1 acre of hybrid fresh pepper with yields of 20_30 bags of pepper every 4 days for around 4 months and that is not subsistence farming.

I agree with you that is not subsistence. It is worth trying in future.

How do you market this product and how easy has it been?

Heavy Rainfall in Lagos- 3/11/218

Kenaf production can not be done on a subsistence level. Hence most time it is produced by cooperatives. An individual that can make capital available can do it alone and make good returns.

Before you commence Kenaf production you must secure the buyer because it is not a product to be sold in the market place. The buyers are all over the world looking for who will help produce for them.

Major problem with Kenaf is fungi. You must treat your seed with fungicide and the land as well to avoid infestation. Kenaf will do very well in Nigeria as we already have a ready market.

One of the reasons for the slow development of the product in Nigeria is because the machinery for planting , harvesting and processing are not readily available. The association in charge has been relying on government for intervention and help from government though assuredly it would come but when, how long shall we wait? I made enquiry and realized that normal planters can plant while harvesting can be done manually for now. The Kenaf decorticator for fibre production cost like N 2million. With a proper planning and execution one can start this profitable business with less than N10million and make consistent progress within a year.

I will provide more insight as we prepare for 2019 production .

ThisIsBaobab

Kenaf grows so fast that in 75days you can begin to harvest for fibre and in 4 months you can harvest for seeds and still earn very good returns from the stem.

Four major products make up kenaf and they are often cultivated for these reasons.1. Bast fibre ( that is the peel, or bark) 2. Core fibre ( the inner wood) 3. Seed. And 4. The leaves majorly for animal nutrition it contains over 30% plant protein.

Ayokunleayoolashakirudeen:

I sent you a pm... please reply

I have replied.