VIABLE AGRIC BUSSINESS IDEAS IN NIGERIA

TEN AGRICULTURE BUSINESS IDEAS FOR ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS IN 2017

With the downturn of the country’s much relied on oil and gas sector, many people view agriculture as the way out. The Agriculture sector is now taking a prominent position in Nigeria’s economy; making up to 20.49% of the total GDP in the first quarter of 2016 (National Bureau of Statistics ). 

Since food is one of the basics of man, agricultural products will always be in high demand locally and internationally. As an entrepreneur or young person looking for something to venture into, you can key into one of these agricultural demands. You can potentially create enormous wealth for yourself by setting up an agro-business. The opportunities are endless in the agricultural sector. This article aims to highlight several agriculture business ideas for beginners.

1. POULTRY FARMING: BROILERS
This is for the production of meat. The exciting thing about this particular breed of birds is that it matures within a short period of time. The ideal time to start raising broilers is in February  against the Easter festivities and October for Christmas and new year sales. It is important to note that, broilers can be raised all year round provided you have a ready market for your output. 

For first-timers, it is advisable you go for birds that have been raised for four weeks from a reliable farm or outlet. This is because birds that have been kept for four weeks have a greater chance of survival than the day old chicks. Once you become very familiar with the trade, you may also venture into raising and selling broilers at four weeks.

Most of your spending is expected to go on feeds and it is expected that the birds will be raised for a duration of twelve weeks. Vaccination and prompt treatment are advised to be carried out as at when due. A chicken can be sold between N2000 to N3000 at maturity.

2. POULTRY FARMING: LAYERS
Here you are breeding your layer birds with the major aim of producing eggs. This aspect of poultry might require a little more capital and time when compared to broilers, but it will be worthwhile in the end. Layers will overall give you two sources of revenue, which are sales from the egg and selling the bird off once they become spent(when their egg production has tremendously reduced).

It is important to state that while poultry can fetch you 100% returns on, you can equally lose all your birds in a day(yes it can be that bad!) due to bad management practices. To avoid this ugly occurrence, it is important you employ the services of a vet doctor(or anyone vast in raising birds) to do routine checks on your birds.

3. EGG AND CHICKEN DISTRIBUTION
This practically involves trying to bridge the supply gap existing between poultry farmers and consumers. It is a profitable venture which requires a relatively little start-up cash. You can decide to venture into the sales of either chicken or eggs, and can also decide to combine the two. You will buy from poultry farmers and resell to wholesalers and retailers. No special skill is required, but a good marketing ability and a car might come in handy.

4. FRESH VEGETABLE
This is a small-scale business that can be started with very little capital. One of the benefits of the fresh vegetable business is that it does not require any cost of maintenance for its smooth running(except when you have gone into large scale production and require pumping machine for irrigation). Fresh leafy vegetables are always on demand so the market should not be a problem.

To kick-start this business, all you need is a cultivatable piece of land in your compound or around your area. Leafy vegetables including; Waterleaf, Scent Leaf, and Ugu leaf can be planted. Vegetables are majorly propagated by seed and in the case of water leaf, by the stem. The dry season is the best time to get maximum returns from cultivating vegetables provided you can go through the stress of irrigation that most farmers try to avoid.

5. CATFISH FARMING
Catfish fish rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids which aid in controlling the cholesterol levels in humans. The various health benefit of catfish makes it to be in high demand among healthy eaters, particularly those above the age of forty. Fast food joints, restaurants,  hotels, food courts, pepper soup joints, market women, ministries, offices, public schools and various tertiary institutions of learning are potential markets for anyone who wishes to venture into catfish farming.

Before starting your fish farm, it is advisable that you visit a couple of fish farms around and see things at first hand.

6. CATFISH SMOKING
One of the easiest cottage agricultural businesses you can start is the catfish smoking business.
There are a lot of catfish farmers all around today, so sourcing for fresh catfish to smoke should not be much of a stress. You do not necessarily have to be into catfish farming to make a lot of money by smoking fish. 

Well-processed smoked fish is a great source of income source for those already involved in it. If you have the smoking kiln, you can also smoke on a commercial scale for people and earn cool cash. A kilogram of fish is processed and smoked between N100 – N150 depending on the part of the country.

7. SNAIL FARMING
This is a business often neglected by many. The giant African snail is the  breed of snail that is ideal for farming. The suitable species for snail farming in Nigeria are, Achatina Fulica, Achatina Achatina, and Archachatina Marginata. Achatina Achatina is the more prolific of them all, it can lay up to 200-400 eggs per batch 2-3 times every year.

You can source the snail for your farm by hand picking, open market, and from reliable snails farm. Snail farming can be quite slow initially, but you will reap  the benefit if you are patient.

8. PLANTAIN AND BANANA PLANTATION
There is a high demand for plantain and banana(ripe and unripe) within and outside the country. Any unused land at your disposal can be converted into a banana or plantain farm.

9. STARTING A BLOG ON AGRO NICHE
A great number people are now willing to embrace various agricultural businesses. They, however, need an accurate and reliable source of information to help them get started. To breach this information gap, you can start an Agricultural blog.

For example, you can create a poultry blog to educate poultry farmers and intending poultry farmers on the modern ways to run their poultry farming business. You can generate income from your blog through adverts. You can also become an online consultant. It is expected that you have an extensive knowledge in agriculture before venturing into this type of business.

10. CHARCOAL SUPPLY
Many industries make use of charcoals in large quantities. Charcoal can be bought in large quantities from nearby villages and supplied to smoked fish farms, bakeries and all other industries that use coal as their source of heat. A bag of charcoal can be purchased at N1,000 from these villages and resold for N1,500 or more in the city.

The investment opportunities in agriculture are not limited to just the above list. You will surely find out more with a little research of your own. Your capital is not the only requirement to succeed in the agricultural business. It is extremely important that you study and really understand the aspect you  are aiming to invest in. Ensure that you also seek for help and advice from experts in your field of endeavor from time to time.

Adeniran Adekunle is a member of His-Eminence farms.
For further help and advice, you can contact him via mail on adeniranadekunleo@gmail.com
Or His-eminence farms; hiseminencefarmsng@gmail.com
Or DM @dayqunlay1 on Twitter.

WHAT IS 'GOOD'!

Hello. At this rate, I might have to make this guy an admin on my blog. He has been prolific to say the least. Including this post, he now has three posts on MY blog; and the trio have been thought-provoking. Big ups to the Engineer.  For a recap of his previous missives, click here and there. For today's post, here you go:

"I don’t have a day job (that should not necessarily be translated as me being jobless). That probably explains why I spend every waking minute, and some sleeping minutes of my life thinking about random topics. Just the other day, I had a dream in which I was thinking about stuff that made me cry. I woke up and the tears just wouldn’t stop. So, I THINK I brood in my sleep too.


Now, having a lot of spare time in the day only partially explains why I think a lot because there are millions of jobless people everywhere who still never sit down to think about anything. The real reason will be that I am just Homo sapien personified. I like to fix every piece of any [figurative] jigsaw. Discrepancies between two recounts of the same event keep me awake all night. When timelines cross, I am always busy thinking. Mostly I am not looking for the lie alone; I am looking for the “why”. Why things happen… Again, I deviate.

In June, I had to embark on the same 8hours road trip four times in four days - coincidentally,  I am typing this in transit of the ilk. Not driving afforded me enough time to do what I do best: sleep think. The driver of the commercial vehicle on one of such journeys had an mp3 transmitter that kept doling out Naija “hip-hop” songs, mostly Olamide’s. I loved that. Then a point came when the music genre changed to Fuji. My music taste only excludes songs by Lady Gaga, so I had no problem with that. I even sang along in my mind. Then a co-passenger made a comment that means “where have you been hiding good music all this while?”  Now I had a problem with that statement. Who told him what good music is supposed to be? Who?!

As general as pretty and ugly can be – because I believe everybody agrees on who is pretty. It is the ugly ones that are up for debate – people still come up with a consolation sentences like “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” [“and the angle you are beholding from” as my lovely ever-recurrent ex girlfriend will put it]. If that applies to beauty (I believe if your beauty depends on who is looking, you are just not pretty – come sit with me), then music is an even more appropriate topic to apply that.

Ultimately, music is entertainment. Different people find different things entertaining. When a musician sings, he/she does so with the hope that someone somewhere finds it entertaining.  If you do, it means that you can relate to whatever message the song is sending; it doesn’t mean that people who don’t like it are doing anything wrong. A Yoruba adage translated to English will mean ”a mad person is fun to watch, not fun to birth”. I am not in cahoots with that. I don’t find mad people fun to watch one bit. But then, I don’t begrudge those who find madness funny their fun. I also have weird ways of catching fun too (like watching people die in SAN ANDREAS* - a classic comedy IMO).


Music has very broad genres. Even within the same genre, styles differ. I know Dare Art Alade, for instance, knows basic music. I know he knows the quavers, clefs, notes, scales and other music jargon, but I am not sorry that I don’t find what he sings as entertaining as Terry G’s. Lil Wayne just talks, I hear none of the Igbo Phyno spits, Baddo and Reminisce are razz, but their songs attend to my issues every day. Of course I listen to every other kind of song depending on my mood and what is obtainable. But then, I will not be caught dead singing Timi [Dakolo] or Simi’s praise. And don’t even get me started on Praiz. That don’t mean I’ll go about calling guys who love slow female songs (whatever they call that genre) fags - what I think of course is in my mind.

In essence, when BET or Grammy declares that someone won an award, the person won THAT award. After all, there is no standard as to what songs should be like. So whatever the organizers decide holds. Now if the Headies decide that Sean Tizzle had more votes than Burna Boy, the “elites” should welcome the idea instead of boring us with how the process is flawed. It’s not like it is not these razz music we [the local ones] and the elite alike groove to in the club.
It is not impossible that I will feel differently about the paragraph before this after right now. But the message today is that: what is music to you is crap to someone else, and quite rightly too. Live with that or kee yourself."
                     --->>>El-Jay ( @laycawn)

*I find it funny that with the number of people (who also have families) that lost their lives, the movie only focuses on a family's survival. Viewers are tricked into only really pitying that family, like the other lives are expendable.

BORING BOREDOM

There are many ways to spend free time – like staring at a wall, watching paint dry, write nonsense/something like this, start a blog, contemplate starting a blog, think about why people contemplate starting blogs, read about why people ever contemplate anything…or any other thing that doesn’t involve electrical power and cellular network (especially if you are in Africa) – which makes the alarming rate at which people complain of boredom sadly astounding. Thirty minutes without their (smart) phones makes youths (and dare I say some adults) of nowadays uneasy.

At this point, I have to make two things clear:
What I am going to end up writing about isn’t what I had in mind when I wrote the first sentence
Errr…I have forgotten what my second point is supposed to be. Moving on…
Smart phones, through the help of social media, are gradually grinding real life human interactions to a halt. I was on an ATM queue the other day – one of the many places where a serial flirt like me picks up targets, by creating weird EYE contacts – and everyone was busy on their phones, to my dismay. Some were smiling, some scowling, a few giggles. Then there was this particular dude who was typing at “breakfinger” speed; something I only do when the other party is trying to breakup with me – Yes, I broke up with the same ex several times-. Now I have to find even more sociopathic and creative ways to pick up targets.

Another increasing trend is the rate at which people text and drive. Ehen, now I remember what my second numbered point is supposed to be: I am in no way “innocent” of any of these vices.
So I sat under a tree close to a major road, observing the flow of traffic (another thing to do with your free time) some days ago and I discovered (not astonishingly) that every other young driver was doing something with their phones alongside driving. And the ones that were my ilk, (with a female ‘copilot’), had their passengers on their [passengers] phones too. Personally, I find long journeys boring if all I have to do is drive. So, I spice it up by dancing, chatting, or making videos. But in my defense, my co-commuters are usually focused on the road whenever I am not. And again, I believe local transit requires more concentration… I digress, not for the first time.

Ignore my verbiage. Verbose, they mostly are. The gist is, social media is eating deep into real social life. Our phones are taking over our lives. It is not uncommon to see people sending friend requests to dead people. That shows how shallow these friendships really are. Now we meet people online or by stealing their phone numbers off mutual friends’ phones (actually, that’s how I met my ex who I like to think I dated for five years!), BBM pins and what have you. We start casually. Initial niceties, mostly veneer. Then it gets religious; staying up so late it becomes early morning. Then a point comes when we run out of things to talk about, even the perverted ones.  The subsequent drifting apart is such an anticlimax, but it is not unexpected. I mean, there is only a few ways to rephrase questions that mean “what is your favorite sex position?”

There is a finite amount of topics you can chat about without seeing each other, not to talk of having mutual friends. And mutual friends are what keep relationship conversations going, IMO. Without them, what/who do/will we discuss? And all that while, there is a brother/sister somewhere, physically available, who we keep rolling with, only until the next exciting online prospect comes around. Sadly.
I don’t expect this piece to change anyone’s attitude towards their phones or the like. Verily, I don’t even expect many people to read this article. I’m just a guy who knows a guy who owns a blog. Hence, my pedantic rant. I am not even necessarily going to change how I use social media, as a result, so there is absolutely zero reason why you should.
Pizzout!

L.J

IN MY OPINION

I have an opinion about everything: Wizkid or Davido, Racism, Homophobia, Ronaldo or Messi, The Oba of Lagos and the Igbos…but I rarely voice my opinion about anything. Well, unless it has to do with my ex-girlfriend (bless her soul. And face. And body. And…) that very pretty adorable bastard! Anyway, I digress.

I think the fact that anybody can justify whatever nonsense they say with “in my opinion” is just wrong, in my opinion (no pun intended, dishonestly). Everyone can have an independent view on any subject, true. But there should be a limit to the range of subjects to which people share those views.
As an Arsenal FC fan, I’ve seen the fickleness of football fans. I have heard people who know nothing about football, question team selection, tactics (or supposed lack of it), substitutions and transfer policies. If you ask me, Adebayor was very good, Eduardo Da Silva shouldn’t have been sold, RvP should have been allowed to rot on the bench…and the list goes on.

But nobody is asking me. That’s because my opinion doesn’t count. And that’s what everyone should always bear in mind.
It is acceptable if Nigerians voice their opinions about Nigeria, no matter how absurd – even if no one is really listening to them. My mechanic can make a suggestion about my car. But that’s all it will be – a suggestion. It is not out of place to voice your opinion in your family, although you should know no one really has to pay attention if you don’t contribute substantially to the GDP of your household.
But when people invest millions of pounds in a business venture – which is what media outlets, football clubs, religious institutions (dare I say), schools and the likes, quite frankly, are – you don’t expect anyone to listen to what you have to say. In that case, why bother to talk? Why??

My two cents (even if you didn’t ask for it - hypocritical, I know); if you don’t like something that doesn’t belong to you, look the other way. Find something you can live with. Again, if you, as an Arsenal fan, think Jose Mourinho is a better tactical manager, and if you really love tactics that much, simply support Chelsea. Same applies to every other facet of life. No one says you have to like “spoilt” kids like Davido. Rae Sremmurd doesn’t need your opinion on how to spend the money you didn’t help him make. I love Terry G, my ex thinks he makes noise. We coexisted…at least for a while. Again, I digress.

It is in human nature to not agree on everything. There will always be people who think otherwise. Those who think MJ was whack. Those who think people should sleep in the day and work at night. Those (of us) who think gay marriages shouldn’t even be up for discussion (Eeeww!!!).  But these people, myself inclusive, can apply what they think into their lives. And shove the rest, gently, very nicely, up their ass.

Do what you enjoy, as long as you are not hurting others. Be with who you like. Eat what you like. And stop disturbing the rest of us with your opinion. That, is my opinion.                    
--->>>L.J