Urban agribusiness, otherwise known as urban gardening or horticulture, is not strange to us. It would be recalled that between 1976 and 1980, the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo introduced what it called Operation Feed the Nation (OFN). It was a scheme meant to fight poverty and hunger.
SIAKA MOMOH spoke to some of these urban farmers whilst in BusinessDay in March 2013. It was quite an interesting story of small-scale farmers striving to keep body and soul together. But the fear they expressed then has come to reality. Lagos-Badagry Motorway enlargement has swept them away.
We republish their story today because it is still relevant. Relevant because the hunger and poverty that the urban farms were established to fight are still very much with us over a decade when this writer spoke to them.
Joshua Samaila is one of several vegetable farmers who owns a farm along Lagos-Badagry Motorway – the area stretching through Fin Niger, Abule-Ado, and Oluti of the motorway. He has been involved in farming since 1995. Back home in Niger State, where he hails from, he farmed groundnut, maize, cassava and cowpea. In his present farm, he grows spring onions, lettuce, garbage and local vegetables.
Joshua has just one staff that was not available on the day he was interviewed. So he had so much to do that day. He shuttled between a shallow pull of water located within the farm and rows of appealing vegetable beds, fetching water with two buckets and sprayed its content on the vegetables. Joshua’s group of vegetable farmers called Dantata Farms (nine of them that belonged to the group – the total number of vegetable farmers is 50) belonged to Festac Cooperative Agricultural Multipurpose Society (FESTAC CAMS) made up of 14 groups. Others in the group are piggery, poultry, and snail farmers. Joshua is the secretary of the vegetable farmers group.
The group meets fortnightly off season, which is during the raining season but once a month when in season, that is dry season. The group is not exploring the advantages of size to empower members businesses. For instance, it is expected that as a group, FESTAC CAMS should not have problem accessing loans from banks since it can explore the advantage of peer group influence or access funding as a group. It can also do cooperative exporting because as a group, it can put together the large volume request, of oversea buyers. But this is not the case because; according to Joshua “members do not cooperate”. He cited the example of only nine members out of 50 agreeing to belong to FESTAC CAMS.
And this no doubt is why the income of these farmers is low. Elements responsible for food insecurity in Samaila earns N30, 000 a month “when there is market”
“Most of the time when we cannot sell we throw away lots of vegetable,” he said. That is post-harvest loss for you, one of the food elements responsible for food insecurity in the country.
Haruna Musa who hails from Jigawa State has been in farming for 30 years. His farm is adjacent to Joshua’s and he grows bitter leaf, lettuce and garbage. Like Joshua his monthly revenue is low at N20, 000. Said he: “We spend a lot of money on pesticides, manure and at the end of the day we sell little and throw away so much”.
Kande Penuel, a lady vegetable farmer and wife of a navy personnel has done farming for 20 years. Kande, from Gombe State, grew up in a family farm and so agriculture has become a passion for her. And interestingly, she studied Agriculture at the School of Agriculture, Bauchi State. For her too, demand can be lull sometimes, and this happens “we throw away the stock that we cannot sell”.
In her farm, she has 100 beds of vegetable. It takes ten days for the vegetable on beds to mature and the harvest from a bed is N300. This means she makes N30, 000 in 10 days and N90, 000 in a month, if all goes well. Perhaps one can estimate an income of between N60,000 and N70, 000 a month for Penuel. She can make more money if she has more vegetable beds. Sales are made through contractors who come to buy for corporate bodies like hotels and noodles manufacturers like De-United.
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