In a new push to revive agriculture, private operators have established farming estates where they sell and lease land to new farmers. It is an effort to lay a stronger foundation for growth in the agric sector, DANIEL ESSIET reports.
Ibadan is now a valley of gold for farmers. As a result good rainfall the area has seen in decades fields of cassava, yams and maize, tomatoes, yam tubers, bunches of plantain, mango, cashew, banana, and palm heavy with grain that will sustain communities.
In few places, farmers use irrigation farming using banks of existing water sources during the dry season for crops such as tomato, pepper, garden eggs, cucumber, watermelon, teferia (ugwu), okra. The Oyo State government is doing everything to preserve agricultural land, particularly that close to the city.
This led to the development of a food system that supports sustainable production of safe, healthy food that is available to all.
Within this context, an economic model, known as farm estates has emerged. Under the arrangement, transfer of land to investors is a core component. Benefitting farmers are given land to grow food for themselves, their families and local communities.
To boost food production, governments in the Southwest, have embraced farm estates strategy giving out fertile land with good transport links to farmers at low cost for many years.
To attract investors to fish farming, Lagos State government has unveiled opportunities in its fish farm estates which investors could tap into and make millions of naira.
The fish farm estate targets the low income groups, such as artisan and fishermen, school leavers as well as high income groups and corporate bodies.
For instance, Ikorodu Fish Farm Estate established on a 34-hectare parcel of land at Odogunyan, Ikorodu, had 262 production plots which had been allocated to 176 allottees, making the estate fully subscribed.
The estate is producing an average of 10,000 tonnes of fresh fish per annum. This project has created jobs directly and indirectly to hundreds of young school leavers and undergraduates of fisheries. It has a technology demonstration centre comprising 50,000 juvenile/cycle fish hatchery and 300 kg fish capacity processing unit constructed by government to serve as a demonstration centre.
While the government is promoting investment opportunities using farming estates models, private organisations and individuals have jumped at this opportunity and have been active at all levels of the market. Private promoters involved are those who demand a new paradigm for agriculture.
One of the entrepreneurs involved in the private farm estate project is the Chief Executive, Natural Nutrient Limited,Mr Sola Adeniyi.
He has over 220-acre farm estate in Ewekoro Local Government area, Ogun State. He gives at least a plot to start-up farmers to plant plantain. Sales so far, showed the strength of demand across the country. Since there is competition for farmland, he is getting good returns on his investment.
He has been getting many enquiries from expanding farmers looking for land to farm.
The farm includes pasture, arable land and woodland. His main enterprises include arable cropping, In addition, there is an arrangement for a number of residential farm houses to help support the estate.
Adeniyi said his company is ready to welcome visitors to the farm to find out more about what they do. This includes other farmers, customers and the local community.
What he envisions is a new generation of Nigerians who want to generate income through absentee agriculture.
For civil servants and business people who live in Lagos, he wants see them make money through farms in the estate that will be manage for them in their absence.
Nigerians living away from the estate location will be able to reap thousands of naira yearly in profits from cash crops grown with the help of workers employed to run their farms by the estate management.
What is required is the capital to buy the land and monthly management costs.
Adeniyi stressed that his organisation wants to support Nigerians to increase their incomes through absentee agriculture. With prices for basic foodstuffs at their highest levels, many Nigerians would be well rewarded by farming.
Adeniyi has a huge diversified farm and wants to help absentee farmers prosper.
Before going into private farm estate business, he had established a thriving Moringa tree plantain.
Through training provision, he has helped new farmers to deliver better quality produce while increasing outputs and decreasing costs, as well as spoilage. This had led to higher incomes for the farmers, who are mostly smallholders.
He trains local farmers in areas such as cultivation methods, post-harvest handling and food processing to improve their entire process according to international quality standards such as Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), which is one of the most widely trusted standards for food safety.
For him, the benefits for farmers operating through farm estates are quite obvious: enhanced product quality and productivity, reduced post-harvest loss through proper product handling and faster delivery to the market, more stable income on a regular basis thanks to larger, demand-driven orders in the setting of an up-to-date distribution system and reduced third-party costs and enhanced efficiency in the supply chain.
Most of the farmers who have brought into the project are local small and medium farmers and food processors from different areas of Ogun and Lagos states.
They are going to produce fruits and vegetables, some will run aquaculture businesses.
Another promoter of a private farm estate is Mr. Sanmi Akindipe, chief executive, Set Group. He believes for more farmers to escape poverty, higher yields and greater revenues are needed.
According to him, they can only achieve this under a low-cost location with, natural farming potential, nice weather and plenty of opportunities. He has acquired a 500 hectares farm estate that will be given out to farmers and retirees thinking of farming. The farm is to be organised into reasonable sized blocks. Few metres away from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, the facility provides for residential farm apartments. Akindipe is eager to see the estate help to build a healthier ecosystem for locally grown food.
Investors buying into his farm estate project can also use the presence of agricultural institutions and related agencies such as Oyo State Agricultural Development Programme (OYSADEP), Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IAR&T), Ogun-Osun River Basin Development Authority (OORBDA), National Institute for Horticulture (NIHORT), Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN), (IITA), Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN), Oyo State School of Agriculture, Igboora, University of Ibadan, Lagoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbo-moso, Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER).
With the location near Ibadan, producers and urban consumers will now be connected at a regional scale, bring together the demand from consumers and, on the other, aggregate products from local and producers in surrounding areas.
For him, farming estates is one of the best examples of a successful farming system, providing real income to producers. Consumers, particularly the new middle class, are hungry not only for new foods, but also for new food systems. In the estate, each farmer is a free to acquire enough equipment to run an independent operation.
He said farmers would seek out new production methods, new marketing approaches and new technologies.
