If you’ve been reading up on posts outlining how to start your own farm business in Nigeria, you would have stumbled on quite a bit which also tells you that a lot of money can be made from just farming. While this is true, farming, just like any other job, requires patience and hard work.
This blog post is a step by step guide that you’ll help you set up a successful farm business.
Before going into details about starting this business, you first need to know what kind of farm business you want to specialize in. There are various branches of farming that you can engage in but you have to have made up your mind because this is going to take up a lot of your time and resources. Here are a few branches listed below to help get you started,:
- Animal Farming
- Cash Crop Farming
- Grain & Forage Farming
Steps to starting up your farm businesss
1) Create A Niche: Before starting a business, you would have read up on the processes involved before deciding if you’re going to commit your time, money and energy to that project. The same goes for farming, you have to decide the type and scale of farming you wish to go into. Types have been listed above so we’ll focus on scale here. This piece refers to commercial farming which basically means growing (or rearing, in the case of animals) enough for sale in a market.
2) Conduct A Survey: Once you’ve decided on the type you want to specialize in, this is the next step to help you succeed in this business. Let’s take small scale fish farming as an example here, you will need to find all all you can about the feed, fingerlings, the weather conditions they can survive in, price, land acquisition for pond design, availability of veterinarian in cases of mass deaths of fingerlings, the supplements they’ll need, the drugs, markets for your products, pond design and nature of the water.
Remember, it’s not safe to assume anything when you want to start farming in Nigeria unless you have detailed information about that type of farming, else you’ll be running the business at a huge loss.
When this is done, you can design a good feasibility study report of your business and then move to the next step.
3) Raising Capital: Regardless of the size of farm you wish to have, you’ll need to raise capital before you can start off. In Nigeria, there are some ways to get the revenue needed to start up this business and this includes your savings, soliciting funds from friends and family, NGOs, commercial banks and Bank of Agriculture/Industry, co-operative societies, etc.
Note that the bigger your farming project, the more capital you’ll need to raise
4) Purchasing Equipment: You’ve successfully conducted a survey based on the branch of farming you’ll like to engage in and you’ve raised enough capital to get you started, the next step is acquiring the things necessary to start up the farm.
4) Purchasing Equipment: You’ve successfully conducted a survey based on the branch of farming you’ll like to engage in and you’ve raised enough capital to get you started, the next step is acquiring the things necessary to start up the farm.
The importance of this stage cannot be overemphasized and again, this is not something that should be done with little effort. Let’s assume you wish to start cultivating tubers, maybe yam and cassava. You’ll have to purchase the land to grow them on, the seed tubers, sticks for staking the yam, manure or fertilizer (whichever you decide to use), steady water source (depending on the time of year), machetes (for clearing the land if you cannot afford machines), hoes (for making ridges in place of farm equipments), consider the cost of labour if you don’t think you can work on the farm on your own and various other things you found out in step 2.
Note that the mechanization of your cassava/yam farm is dependent on the capital at your disposal. Therefore it would be advisable to acquire the necessary farm equipments needed depending on your area of interest..
5) Implement Your Ideas: This is the most important step to carry out when starting your farm business. After you’ve successfully complete the steps listed above, be sure to implement your idea of how you want to start running your farm else, it’s not going to be worth your while.
You must execute your plan and bring it to life. If you want a fish farm, you should first of all, design your pond. Know if you want to build it with blocks, get a treated water system flowing inside if you decide to go into it on a large scale. If you’re thinking more along the lines of a medium or small farm, then you can get a tank which has been divided in two and fitted with a water pump to supply water in the pond.
6) Seek Professional Advice: Always remember that the professional advice from a consultant you hire is always to be adhered to, because they have the
experience necessary to help you guide your steps. Don’t be difficult when they tell you what to do so that you don't run into problems that will add unnecessary expenses to the cost of running the business.
It won’t take much to get help from an experienced person who has over the course of time gotten their hands dirty in this line of business.
5) Implement Your Ideas: This is the most important step to carry out when starting your farm business. After you’ve successfully complete the steps listed above, be sure to implement your idea of how you want to start running your farm else, it’s not going to be worth your while.
You must execute your plan and bring it to life. If you want a fish farm, you should first of all, design your pond. Know if you want to build it with blocks, get a treated water system flowing inside if you decide to go into it on a large scale. If you’re thinking more along the lines of a medium or small farm, then you can get a tank which has been divided in two and fitted with a water pump to supply water in the pond.
6) Seek Professional Advice: Always remember that the professional advice from a consultant you hire is always to be adhered to, because they have the
experience necessary to help you guide your steps. Don’t be difficult when they tell you what to do so that you don't run into problems that will add unnecessary expenses to the cost of running the business.
It won’t take much to get help from an experienced person who has over the course of time gotten their hands dirty in this line of business.
With all that’s been said, I think we can conclude this topic
Conclusion: As soon as all the points listed above has been taken into account and carried out, you just need to be patient. After a while, you will reap the benefits and rewards of the resources that has been invested in the business. I hope that these few tips have been helpful.
Conclusion: As soon as all the points listed above has been taken into account and carried out, you just need to be patient. After a while, you will reap the benefits and rewards of the resources that has been invested in the business. I hope that these few tips have been helpful.
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