₦airaland Forum

Beans and fried plantain.

Onyeedum:
If our banking sectors don't restructure, very soon telecommunications providers may take over banking services.

Mobile operators have more capacity to take on unbanked people and residents of rural areas faster due to high usage of mobile phones. That's financial inclusion but with the way things are in Nigeria, the banks have an edge over telcos. Only the cbn could make policies that would engage more mobile money operators. banks are going to be relevant here forever.

Stillthebest:


Sometimes, people don't need others opinion about som personal issues.

But my advice; centring on, do you like to be a business person or a career profiled personality?
If you prefer the latter, no matter the condition of the job, go ahead and build your profile. The pay is enough to get up from the lowest ground in anywhere in Nigeria.

If the former is your look-out-for, don't ever consider the job. The profit margin you make currently with the amount of capital presenting it's blue face to you right now(#1M) is very good enough to turn you to a millionaire entrepreneur in 5 years if you can put more efforts than the ones you had always put, even if it pure water business.

The latter builds your profile while the former builds your financial strength.

Started the job already. Business is on hold for now but it would start January, working towards putting someone in charge.

Please each time I check returns on treasury bills, I see different levels for 91, 182 and 364 days. What's the major difference between these changes. From my knowledge, why invest for one year when I could get similar percentage in 91 days? Or are the 91 and 182 days percentages a division of what's obtainable annually? I need answers please. Thanks.

TRIPLEGATE:
Pls can link me to the business, I have interest for the said business

Regular produce trading business.

This sounds really difficult with you but it brings out a good reflection that you understand what you're going through, you're tired of it and want to get out. It's difficult to get good jobs in a fast way in Nigeria, one has to saddle with displeasing jobs and the likes for some initial years. However, I would advise you start connecting with people as much as you can offline and online. It could even be in your place of religious worship. One way or the other, you might get someone who would help with what you need at the moment and some could volunteer to get you a job, learn valuable skills or start businesses. Keep doing this and I can assure you help would come before the year runs out. Don't be so bothered about your age, you can't do anything about that.

They will be running about looking for investors. Ask him the amount of rice produced in Ekiti and you would be surprised at the meagre quantity. work on enabling your farmers to produce more, set up modular mills and the lives of the people would get better. Dem go install 20T per day machine, state go dey produce 20T per month. Did he even consider the need for irrigation farming before shouting we dey find money?

How long does it actually take to make this work? Everything here takes forever. Ibadan to Lagos dey take years.

Npower dey earn 30k now and they are okay in a way. It actually depends on where you are based. Someone who earns 30k in Taraba wouldn't complain a lot because accommodation is cheap, foods are too but in Lagos, you go hear when!

Haryoureendey4:
please let me handle the business for u sir, trustworthy and very diligent

I appreciate but I would rather use a familiar person.

Naughtysite:
This description is Vague, " I make 30% of my income in 2 months " .

Be explicit.

What does your current business pay you monthly ?

Who offered the 1 million and which biz are you going to invest the N1m into ? Will it increase your current income further ?

Are you interested in a partnership ?

The business pays 30% of the income I put into it. Getting more money is a plus, apparently the proceeds from 1 million in two months would be 300k and that increases when I inveat part of the profit into the business. I got a grant of 1 million naira to boost the business last month

naijadrivablog:
If you can, do both. And see how it pans out. Invest like 500k in the business, take the job of N190k.

This is a business I've been doing for over two years, I have a good knowledge on how it works. No amount of money is too much to invest in it. Just trying to consider the incidence of business development with the proceeds from the job.

[quote author=maryjames9 post=82875057]If I were you, I would do both. I will take the money and invest it in a FG bond or Treasury bills if the business will require my full concentration, else will start off and recruit a good and highly motivated staff to monitor the business for me as I return there daily while I make more money from the NGO job. Depending on the state where the job is, I could save 75 percent or 50 percent at least 30 percent monthly. Work for a few years while getting more experience on the business. Resign after making more than enough to sustain a viable business including good and strategic location, market, marketing, branding etc. [/qu
NGO jobs are quite difficult especially when one has to travel through remote villages. My business is from Benue to Lagos while I work the job would be in Borno.

TRADELYN:
Take up the job and put proper structure in place for your business to grow and expand it if well managed. You will not regret it.

Nigeria needs as many small businesses as possible to reduce poverty/crime.

Trying so hard to get someone who could manage the business. It's a great search really, quite difficult to trust people.

thariodamaniac:
Ur brain is always trying to get you comfortable..... That's why u are thinking about the job.... You thought of the stress u would go through before u start making millions.... But if u have a job you will get STEADY 190k monthly...

How much sacrifice are u willing to make to achieve ur goals.... If you get a salary monthly how fast Willie self development be...

This is a personal question that u have to ask urself... Check out those who were employed and how long it took to get to the top and check those who had businesses and see how long it took to get to the top.... Compare and contrast and see what fits ur lifestyle....

It's always a personal decision.... Check ur long term goals against all these... Then u have an answer...

My decision would have been get someone else to handle the business while I take the job but it's uneasy because I deal with agricultural produce and it needs to be gotten from northern nigeria. I also have no idea how the career on the job would be, it's an ngo job.

I have this business I currently do where I make 30% of my income in two months. I just had the opportunity of getting million naira to continue the business while I got another offer of a job where I could earn 190k monthly.
I'm confused really. What would you advise? .

Joy2Dwise:
I kept receiving pop-up messages from GTB on my mobile app stating that I was qualified to apply for loan but I kept ignoring them cus I knew that getting a loan is not as easy as that. I knew what I went through on few occasions when I had to take loans as small as 300k to sort out some immediate financial needs. It got to a point when I began to expect the bank to request the death certificate of my great grand father before they approve a loan amount that is not even up to my monthly earnings. The most embarrassing moment was when two close friends refused to sign guarantor forms because they claimed it was against their principle. I had to swallow my pride and go to a junior who eventually stood in as my guarantor at the end.

Out of curiousity, I clicked "accept'' just to see if it was real. Next message I got was that "your application has been accepted". To cut the long story short, I received an alert of about 1m.150k just few hours later and this sounded incredible. A scanned copy of the repayment plan was later emailed to me and when I did the calculation, I found out that the total percentage of interest is about 12% as against 22 - 26% which I was forced to cough out in previous loans I took from different banks in the past. This to me was a good deal even though I don't have a specific plan for it. Had to push it to my son's account while I wrap my head around what best to do with the money.

This instant loan and the attractive interest rate kept me wondering on the following:

1. Does it mean the banks now have so much money in their coffers to lend out to customers even without asking?
2. What is the reason for the low interest rate which to me is still far lower than what is obtainable?

I called my account officer to ascertain if I can invest it in FG bond but I wasn't impressed with the interest rate so I'm going to keep it in the bank pending on when I decide on what to do with it. Any good idea is however welcomed.

What's the current rate on 91 and 364 days treasury bills?

Idemujoseph:
you are correct sir. They use seeds saved from previous harvest. I will be grateful if you can point out possible challenges watermelon farmers do face.
Thanks

Where are you based?

okoroemeka:
they will never recover,if you pull it up you will see that the stem and root system is finished.

How about the watermelon you planted? They should be forming balls already. Any update?

Pistotita:
As soon as you cross 1 acre, they might not really serve you well. And not the types imported here. Waste of money. Only two brands I know and are from the US and Italy. The rest are not worth it.

Small farmers should think more of intensive smaller plots instead of going on massive 20 ha they cannot manage. Just 1 ha if done well is ok. Just try to get to the potential of 10 tons per ha. If I have the right resources, I will get that. How many of them have the patience of first cultivating legumes to fix Nitrogen? How many of them put irrigation installation into consideration? Mind you, big farms have their ways of making rain fall when they want. Or they go for drought tolerated seeds.

My brother, I don't do what I cannot afford. I don't force it. Once I check the optimum condition, and I know within myself I cannot afford it, or the resources (like tractor) are not available, ai do not force it. I don't go about looking for cheap ways.

Quite enlightening. You should understand that mechanization is a necessity for our agricultural system to ensure food security. However, considering the finance of small holder farmers who make up majority of farmers, it's uneconomical to utilize tractors and draught animals have got its own downside too. I recently researched on the capabilities of the tillers, they could be good alternatives for small land holdings but quality of the machineries remain a problem. in fact, some have irrigation capabilities. Like you mentioned, if the quality ones could be obtained and made available to farmers on hiring basis, we will be moving a step closer to food sufficiency and reduced reliance on human labor.

Pistotita:
Bro permit me to add this: the standard dimension Monsanto gave African small scale farmers which I also researched well, and concluded that it is reasonable enough to compete with commercial farming in any part of the world is 21,333+/-10% per acre. Better to be on the + side, and
feed the plants well like you said to quickly develop canopies. Therefore, do not compromise using planters, or you will never get good population. From experience using manual planting style is waste of time. Those human planters always jump, and at the end you have scanty population, and enough left over seeds. You pay them again to replant after some weeks, and you have non uniform germination rate which is the main cause for low yield. Why? There is a stage you go with low irrigation with corn, and there is a stage you bombard it with water. The difference between corn cobs that are filled with grains from the tail end to the top and those scanty is lack of water to push nutrients, esp Nitrogen into the soil at this particular period. As soon as you cross the stage, just leave your corn. You are getting super high harvest.

Corn is commercial for me with tractor bombarding the land. I am not sure how poultry manure can work on large farmland. Well it may. But commercial farms use more of green manure. Meaning they must have first grown legumes, then plough inside the soil, and leave to rot very well, before ploughing again. Just 10 ha of well planned farm, of course, legumes first is worth doing. Even 1 acre is worth doing, and you can use manual style (without tractor), but make sure your voice is loud to control the boys politely. lol.

So, three recommendations:

1. get a good tractor driver and formulate your ideas with him prior to the project,
2. get your planters and side dressing fertilizer applicators (not so efficient using people, but you can try, just that applying nutrients to over 50K plants while bending up and standing per ha is not easy, those workers will definitely skip many plants)
3. be ready and practice well with your planters and fertilizer applicators, and make sure they can work on soil ploughed by tractor, and get your irrigation, pesticides (organic or inoganic) nutrients ready.


Bro, how do you fight army worm? Kinda tough.

About machineries, will power tillers help? tractor isn't easy to acquire for many small holders. Have you had any experience using power tillers? can it really fill in for tractor in small holders land preparation?

nicepoker101:
5 hectares? That's 12.355 acres with power tillers?

They come with different power specs. There are power tillers of 15Hp. Those will do well. As regards speed, the work doesnt have to be completed in a day, power tillers should plough 5 hectares in 3 days.

stagger:
Yep. I concur. Animals can just do the job without complaining. In Michigan which is an agrarian state in the US, bulls are still used to plow the land.

Great alternative. However, what i feel might not work so well in the Nigerian space is the seasonality of farming and the limited use the animals are put to. For instance, most farmers employ draught animals for only land preparation which takes only a short period of time. In turn, these bulls have to be well fed to ensure they do not lose their muscles and this isn't done only when they are needed for work, it's a daily routine. The cost of keeping the animals might outweigh the value of their works. In that case, keeping them might not be that attractive. I'd appreciate your opinion about this because i need a solution this farming season.

aycorporat:
Since your location is at Ilasa, I think at Ayedun or Ikole there is cheap labour for those people from the middle belt who will just collect 90,000 for a full year. All you need do is just get an accommodation for them on the farm

I thought of this but considering the size of my farm and the duration of farming (less than 5 months), it's not economical to feed and accommodate about two people for just a hectare of land.

Abdullahi4u7:
I know Ilasa quite well. It's along Omuo road.
Have you got any other alternative?

Nothing for now. Back in Lagos.

nicepoker101:
Power tilers is not for tedious purposes. Mostly used for vegetable farming.

Power tillers can go a great length in increasing machinery penetration in Nigeria, They are not as strong, fast and efficient as tractors but are nice options for small holders with land holdings between 0-5 hectares.

ifedola28:
Mechanized farming is the way to go. Get your self a weeder and a cutter, get someone to help you operate it and pay him a token. Labor is an issue even here in ogun state. They will spend 2 months weeding just 1 acre of land

Sure! However, the use of tractor might not be economically viable for people with land holdings of less than 3 hectares unless for clusters. Heard of power tillers? They might be a great alternative to tractor.

Abdullahi4u7:
Hi
I'm also a farmer in Ekiti State (Ido Osi LGA). I'm in the same shoes, too. You'd be lucky to get labourers to till an hectare of land for you at the rate of N35,000 here.

I don't know of other places but the cost of labour in Ekiti State is too high.

Too high my brother. My farm is located in Ilasa, Ekiti east.

Tipping no one other than the king of clay (Nadal) and that Osaka girl.

It is no longer news that human labour availability has been declining at a fast pace recently. In cases where it is available, it could be quite expensive. It's just May and labor has made 2019 farming a frustration already. Acquired farmland for maize cultivation somewhere in Ekiti state in January, fast forward to May, it's become difficult to get laborers to work on the farm. The ones willing to take up the job are charging 35000 just to till a farmland of about 1 hectare and they want to get 50% advance before starting the job. That's quite too much considering the inefficiency of human labor and the delay that could arise in the course of operation. Contacted the local government agric department to request for tractor hire but the few tractors in their care are not functional. I'm considering my options going forward because there are still activities such as planting, fertilizer application, spraying, weeding and harvesting that will require human labor. So bothered the cost of production will be too high and will greatly impact my profit if there will be any. Amidst the whole situation, my over aching mind has been thinking if there could ever be a solution that replaces this human labour at a lower cost and does not involve use of tractor. Ultimately, it isn't cost efficient for a tractor to travel over 20 kilometers to plough one hectare of land. Many small holder farmers can't even afford to pay for the services offered by tractor. Nairaland millennial farmers, what's the situation in your area? How do you cope with labor availability and wages especially with small land holdings?