Farming Made Easy

Farming Made Easy


The most important factors of production in any enterprise are Land, Labour and Capital. On this blog, I will elaborate on these three factors to make farming at low cost possible for my fellow farmers. Let us start with land.
LAND is the most important of the three factors. The area of land required depends on the type of farm enterprise in view.
The land required for crop production is larger than land required for animal production enterprise. In both enterprises farm land should be located in rural areas, where the cost is relatively low. Poultry or animal production enterprises are not suitable in the urban areas because of environmental hazards to the public. Noise and air pollution in the cities are not good for the health of farm animals. The cost of land in cities is too high for farmers to pay since they need large hectares of land for agriculture business.

So when sitting your farming business put the rural areas in view. There are many villages and towns in Ogun state where land is very cheap. I know of villages and towns not more than 2 hours’ drive from Agege where land is as low as 200,000 Naira per acre. These are farming communities and these towns are good to site new farm. For poultry enterprise of 20,000 birds one acre of land is enough. Land for crop production like plantain production, oil palm production, cassava and maize production requires up to 10 acres of land or more depending on availabilities of capital.
Farm land is still available in Ogun, Oyo and Osun States at low cost. You can also rent land on yearly payment of 4,000 Naira per hectare in the states mentioned above. If getting land is your problem, leave a comment after reading this article or contact elyjay by personal mail on this blog.

LABOUR: This is one of the most important thing in farming. Through development in technology and science, the manual labour required for farming is getting substituted by chemicals and tractors. However manual labour cannot be ruled out by the two types of mention earlier because there are many work on the farm that cannot be done by machines or chemicals especially on small scale farms. With the popularity of Okada and Tricycle (Keke maruwa) business in many parts of the country today, human labour for farming is becoming very expensive.

Weeding is the most common manual labour on the farm. The solution to this lies in the hand of labourers who migrated from neighboring countries like Benin Republic and Togo to work in Nigeria. These people charge as low as 4,000 Naira to weed one acre of farm land. The manual labour on farm includes harvesting, transplanting, spraying, etc. For poultry, permanent labour is recommended. To hire labour to work in poultry the integrity of the labour should be high and must have a guarantor. Such labourers are normally hired on yearly payment with terms and conditions of absolute honesty and residence on the farm.

The wages depends on the age and gender of the worker. For 16 to 20 years 80,000 Naira for one year, or one brand new hajue motorcycle at the end of the year. Above 20 years the payment is 120, 000 naira or one brand new Bajaj motorcycle at the end of the year. If hired on arable crops farm they are required to weed half acre of farm land per day and work 6 days in a week. The yearly paid labour is more reliable than the monthly or daily paid labour. For measured contract or what we called “finish and go labour”, the cost of weeding is 2,500 Naira per acre if done by the foreign workers that is labour from Benin Republic and Togo. For poultry farms, sachet water or bottled water producers, block makers, permanent yearly paid workers is recommended. If getting labour is your problem on the farm or factory leave your comment after reading this article.

MECHANICAL LABOUR: The major source is farm tractors. There are privately owned tractors and government-owned tractors for hire. The private tractors are easily accessible than the government tractors.
Lagos state government has tractor hiring units in the following areas:
Agege – Dairy farm near Pen Cinema
Badagry – Oko Afo
Ikorodu – Erikorodo
Epe – Fisheries
You can hire government tractors at these locations in Lagos state.
In Ogun state, Agric Development Cooperation has branches in the following locations:
Ado odo
Ipokia
Oke odan
Ilaro
Ashero
Ikene
Ijebu ode
Ogbere.
The price is 7,000 per hectare for plowing and 5,000 per hectare for other operations. If you need tractor leave a comment after reading this article.
elyjay