₦airaland Forum

allspicebraind:
Well said, but have you ever had a thinking that one with good mentor can possibly and easily make it than one with bad or no mentor? Many Nigerians follow the same tracts they've been on many years that never worked yet they refused to change their path. To make money like DANGOTE is possible, I have a mentor that makes atimes almost a million or more every month doing information marketing. WE CAN ALL DO IT

A million naira every month? LOL! That's a very long way from Dangote-like income streams. Even mid-level bankers make more than a million naira a month!

occam:
Some of the problems you listed aren’t peculiar to agriculture alone but are experienced in other industries in Nigeria.

Agribusiness (I deliberately use this term) encompasses seed supply, farming, food marketing, packaging and exporting. Sadly, most people only understand the farming aspect and spend all their energy and time cultivating large hectares of land without proper planning and strategy on getting the food to consumers.

Like any other business, understanding consumer needs is the first step to success. A detailed marketing analysis will help identify key segments (direct consumers, food industry, Poultry farms, industrial users and exporters) and size of each potential segment. For instance, maize is consumed as popcorn, cereal, ogi, eko, used for feeding animals etc. So these are your products; not maize. Farming is only the means to an end and not your end goal.

Don’t simply start rice; maize; cassava farming etc rather develop a detailed business plan on how to serve potential customers and which aspect of the agribusiness you want to start with. As your business grows you can integrate vertically or horizontally.    

Agribusiness can be capital intensive and not for the faint hearted. However, it can be very lucrative; albeit a long term venture.

[b]@OP I'll be very wary of rice production because of Nigerians' fondness for polished, imported rice. Ensure you develop a solid plan with risk assessment before you invest your capital.
[/b]

Actually, I beg to disagree. Most agricultural products, especially grain, are commodities and in developed parts of the world, agribusinesses are very rarely vertically integrated. In particular, processed food businesses buy commodity inputs either through pre-arranged supply contracts or through spot market transactions on mercantile exchanges e.g. Tyson chicken rarely owns poultry or cattle farms. Even the companies that import rice into Nigeria rarely own the farms that supply the grain (at their very cores, these importers are logistics and marketing companies). Unfortunately, farmers are largely price-takers (hence the reason for frequent government interventions to provide some cushion against price fluctuations). A fully-integrated business plan might be very counter-productive to a farmer because it often distracts from the real business of farming and also sets up inefficient internal markets (e.g. the food processing arm is often bound to "buy" products from the company farm even when there are cheaper inputs from outside the company).

I am not suggesting that there is no place for a fully-integrated approach to farming but I think its belongs to a different part of the farm life-cycle (when the company already has a successful and well-established farm and is looking to expand into value-added products). At the early and medium-term stages of a farm, the focus should be on producing the desired quality of product at the cheapest price possible and figuring out a way to get that product to the market reliably and on schedule.

tkb417:
okay this question

Guys have been advising me not  to do a large scale farm

do you consider 20 hectares to be large scale

The costs of planting, land preparation, labour, harvesting, storing, cleaning and sorting, bagging and taking to the market is about N12-N15million for 80 hectares!

so how big is 20 hectares?

No, 20 hectares is small scale. I am guessing everyone is assuming that you intend to expand down the line. I don't know very much about agriculture besides stuff I have picked up from casual reading (and I am guessing it's the same for most posters on this thread). I am glad to hear that you've worked closely with a farm with existing operations and already know what the operational reality is.

What is the minimum efficient scale for farming at your given level of non-land medium-term fixed inputs (e.g. farm machines and storage/transport infrastructure)? 20 hectares sounds good for an initial pilot project but is it enough to really build a sustainable business? Can the projected revenues of a 20 hectare farm cover your COGS and operational expenses and still provide enough profit to reinvest and to take care of your personal needs? Do you have historical price data for the type of rice you intend to grow? Are prices relatively stable in the near-medium term or should you be preparing for wild price fluctuations? Can you survive with a prolonged price depression? No be small thing oh. You had better bring out your Excel and start crunching. I have a deep respect for entrepreneurs but I have seen enough business failures to check, check and recheck those numbers and assumptions (one single wrong assumption can completely throw a wrench to the best business plan). Once you're super-confident that you can, at the very minimum, break-even even if you lose half your crop to disease or natural disaster, then ride on! Again, good luck!

Where are the receipts? You can't just make-up statistics in your head and call it science!

Your friend helped you in time of need; don't ever forget that. However, that he helped you gives doesn't give him a right to turn your home into a yanshing pad. There is no short-cut around solving this problem. You're just going to have to be honest and upfront with him if it truly bothers you. It's not safe to have him bringing random strangers into your home at all hours of the night and its certainly not doing your current relationship any favors.

What would you have done if he was your roommate and paying rent? How would you have approached the issue? Use similar techniques with your friend. You want to keep riff-raffs out of your home but you probably don't want to lose a good friend in the process. How about working out an arrangement that restricts his "leisure" activities to during the day when you're at work and your gf is not in the place and insisting that he gets his "women" out of your home before a certain time? Wisdom no eash oh! Otherwise, we would all be King Solomon. I pray God gives you the wisdom to navigate this successfully.

Jarus:
Isn't it funny how people, at the drop of a hat, bring down a company/people without the slightest proof?

Wale Tinubu has given his explanations, it is now left for the committee and you critics to prove he perpetrated crime.

He even said his company had written petitions to the govt in the past, complaining about shady activities in the system, but no action was taken. You critics did not see that.
You armchair critics also did not question why the conditions for granting oil importing licence(a number of retail stations, tank farms, and other assets) were relaxed in 2007.
You also ignored why the number of oil importers suddenly jumped to 100 plus in the last 2 years, and how companies that dont even have assets or even office(briefcase companies) are granted licence to import oil. Questions and more questions; Musikilu Majeed, NEXT's investigative reporter even did a report in the Next then how Diezani was just distributing licence to everybody, including her jeweller, Chris Aire, who now has a briefcase 'oil company'.

Yet, it is Oando that has assets all over the country and a decent company doing Nigeria proud in the global oil industry, you have to blame.

Now that I just figured out that you work for Oando, everything makes sense. Bros, I don't blame you. A paycheck is a paycheck and madam and the children have to eat. Na so life be.

I still can't imagine a scenario under which large-scale commercial rice farming can be successful as an entrepreneurial endeavor without large government subsidies and large financing. You just can't compete with the costs and quality of rice from Asia. They have been growing rice for centuries and have this thing down to nuclear science. Do you have access to a HUGE supply of labor that you'll require to farm rice? Or are you planning on buying large, expensive machinery that can cost millions of dollars? Besides, how do you intend to process yields properly? Rice needs to be milled and polished. Or is your plan to target the local rice market where some dirt and husk is permissible? Please thread cautiously; don't allow your researcher friends form IITA mislead you with assurances based on lab experience. Rice farming is too labor-intensive/capital intensive to be handled on a small scale and without sound government subsidies and you don't want to build your business on the feeble assurances of a government that will be gone in a few years.

Plantain farming is potentially lucrative if you can figure out a way to get your goods to the market in excellent condition and if you can secure your yield from thieves. Please before you start any serious investing, talk to other farmers that have tried and failed (I am sure there are many and they aren't all stu-pid/incompetent. Don't rely on the well-publicized success stories of Obasanjo Farms (that farm is just a hobby; Baba made all his money from thief-thief). Good luck!

I am not for this beating stuff at all. It's immature and utterly useless. The only person you should have been beating is your husband but now that you both have kissed and made-up, please let that other woman go. Tell her new husband but please don't go beating her up oh because you don't know what she's going to do. What if she has a heart condition and then dies? What if her brother is a cult capo and she asks him to beat you up and fck up your car?

There are more effective ways to fck her up without using violence. Just take your time and think; you'll come up with something ten times smarter but without the mess that violence often brings.

ftmom:
At a very young age, my Dad taught us it was okay to pee in any swimming pool while swimming because there is a contant supply of chemicals in the water to disinfect    . Safe to assume he peed in the water too   

It took me a long time to realise that when oyinbo kids go out of the pool and come back shortly after, it was to go pee 

Urine is technically sterile. I am sure nobody was hurt. LOL.

ronkebp:
Dangote (not so much, not into hausa men) but Adenuga (maybe)

$$$ has no ethnicity! Some women would get married to a rock or a tree for the right amount!

ronkebp:
Me ke? i no get power ooooo

That's what they all say until Dangote/Adenuga requests the digits!

oyb:
my old man CANNOT throw anything away. it is just not in his nature.

so we did some renovation at the house and got rid of all the old toilets. this is in festac, and the toilets have no spare parts or anything. we put the toilet outside the house; my dad comes in from ilorin. he sees teh toilet goes, this is a very strong toilet, very good and takes it with him back to ilorin. the toilet is sittiing somewhere in the compound gathering rain water.

Your dad might be a hoarder!

ronkebp:
pLEASE, IGNORE MY QUESTIONS, I SEE SAY NA ONLINE RUNS BE THIS, WAS TRYING TO HELP A FRIEND OUT.

LIES!!!!! You wan do, jor!

chaircover:
LOooooL By the time your Fedex courier manages to deliver your Dossier to Mr CC, I will be in a French speaking country enjoying light and water

Actually I was helping and inciting the poster to think about what he can bring to the table not just what he can take off the table 

Tell Mr CC to buy the X5 or the Evoque and I wont log into NL for 86 months talk less of having any wantom behaviour. I promiseeeeeeeee. . . . . .   

Correct woman! The X5 is a little big for ladies, I think. I see soccer moms in my hood driving those things around and it's not a sexy look. The RR Evoque looks sexy for a woman but is notoriously unreliable. I am currently researching a new replacement for my car so I know all the little details about most luxury vehicles and I look for every opportunity to display that knowledge.

So you're going to the South of France? Have fun and don't come back with a french bastard boyfriend!

chaircover:
All well and good.

Ok so If I was interested, what do you have to offer me in terms of your personality apart from NEPA & a constant supply of water? 

Ha! Look at quick you are to dump Mr. CC because he hasn't yet bought you an RR Evoque!!! Women wicked oh! Chei!!!!!!! I am preparing a dossier for Mr. CC on your wanton NL behavior as I type this. It shall be delivered via Fedex overnight.

TV01:
First let me apologise if you have taken offence. I said nothing derogatory about your family, merely wished you well as head of it.

Until you reconsider your "approach", point out specifics and help drive a solution here, I'll stop responding to your posts on this thread. It's not about us and some may find it distracting.


Best
TV

OK

Reference:
Nutty boy. . I hope you're kidding.

No he is not. I know some people at Ecobank and will be directing their attention to this thread so they know exactly what they inherited.

Sagamite:
Just continue [i]w[/i]anking because women will never want the earth-worm between your legs.

You can keep on hating that sexy women like Busy-body are always calling me over for weekend marathons.

That's not what we just heard oh! Marathon on top 1.5in? You've been smoking that ish again. Don't you have GMAT remedial classes to attend? Or dumpsters to thoroughly investigate?

Busy_body:
See as this one just made me reveal Sagamite's secrets for nothing.

i am talking "show me the money", you are talking "show me the World" wharra timewaster, abeg, NEXT

vvvvvvvv ====== There you go! Convinced?