By Hadassah-Esther Osimen
When intending to venture into agriculture, it is petinent that you also intend to venture into agro allied or partner with individuals or people who wish to do the same. Please do not start agriculture without making sure you prepare the market for your produce whether crops or animal produce. This means you should be strategic about your plan to farm. Fortunately, their are many ventures which already need your crops before you even plant. Please find them at the beginning or somewhere along the planting line . You do not need allied industries if ofcourse you yourself are planning to float an allied industry for your harvest.
In general, here is an ideal scenerrio for the agriculture industrialisation: Farm Ranches should be owned by government rather than individuals so that their can be continuity. It is good to start your farm ranch with a sizeable land of up to 100 hecters if you are planning to plant trees, especially oil palm which the cosmic space highly recommends for Nigeria. The estimated number of palm trees that Nigeria should and can plant is 1.2 Million in every eastern state and 4.8 Million in all the eastern states of Nigeria. This is more than the revenue or rather equal to the revenue from petroleum which has not developed Nigeria because unfortunately, it is curse until their is righteousness! The west must plant coca and sheabutter trees, the south timber and gum trees, as food trees is not recommended in the south due to damages to the soil from oil polution. It would appear the the noth will have to face fields. I generally do not know what trees can thrive there. Whichever area you choose, the goal should be 1.2 million trees per state and 4.68 per agricultural zone. The multiple industries and agro industries that can stream from these trees are remarkable: Food – palm oil, clear palm oil, baking fat, breakfast spreads, magerines, butter, and ingredients for other foods, contruction materials, palm wine (especially the targeted non-alcoholic palm wine and red palm wine which will come from the red coloring extract from the palm seeds, massage oils, etc (you need to contact me for details and more product listing for automobiles, construction and interiors); from the coca trees you get drinks and multiple branded chocolate bars which are in high demand overseas (for instance chocolate eggs are big deals in easter as some of them are as big as a tree and even shaped like humans teddies, rabbits houses,). The industry can come here too. “who no like better thing’? With the gum trees we can have tyres, building materials, paper glues, other glues etc; with the timber we can take it away in all forms of wood work. Remember that the best furnitures which used to come from Italy were made with our timber. We don’t have to import those anymore. We can take it away here too. I am therefore saying that, there are a humongeous opportunity in agro allied industry and you should take advantage of them. Incidentally, trees can fruit for up to 200 years, depending on the type of tree and other factors. You simply start planting new ones 5years into the time you should fell a tree thus ensuring continuity. Note that in your tree plantation, you can have other plants such as yam tubers, casava tubers, ground nuts and several vegetables such as ugu. When the tree begins to grow and form shades that might affect yield, you can simply provide solar lights to ensure photosynthesis. I reckone that the latter might be more required for night farming than for lighting because ferns do not tend to shade off light everywhere like other very leafy trees could.
The opportunities in agro industry is highly untapped in Nigeria with the land green with grass. This should not be anymore. Please do not plant food crops in areas where petroleum has been drilled all these years because it would be poisoneus. God in his wisdom has given them their own trees and they are product trees too.
There are several other products that we can add to our numerous opportunities. We could never possibly run out of a market for our products. I shall be providing an index for agro allied industries which will be available for purchase. Please contact me via estherjoy600@gmail.com for details.
There is so much to say but let’s draw a temporary curtain here. Have a great weekend.
May our land be green with agricultural ranches. Amen! Viva Africa!
