Venturing into vegetables farming is a lucrative mission as virtually everybody eats vegetables.
More so profitable is farming it during dry season when vegetables are scarce. Because, the demand is always higher than supply during dry season, the few farmers who took the pains of farming vegetables during dry season get huge income from such venture.
The uniqueness of vegetables is that, it can grow anywhere with availability of water either from irrigation or rain.
Since all hotels, eateries even bukka all depend on vegetables to keep their businesses afloat, investing in vegetables can be an excellent source of income for would-be investors since vegetables are sources of diets which most people cherished.
In his chat with LEADERSHIP, Mr Adewale Christopher, a civil servant who combines vegetables farming with his work in Osun State said: “One can go into plantation of crops like pepper, tomato, cucumber, watermelon, okra, ewedu, soko, spinach, cowpea, onion, carrot, garden egg, melon, pumpkin, spinach and ugwu with occasional watering by irrigation or watering. But watering tomato directly could be harmful to tomato plantation as it enjoys irrigation than watering from the top. This can be seen that tomato plants often wither whenever there are frequent water or rain landing on their tops.”
According to Christopher, “With current hunger and food insecurity in the country, investing in specialised vegetables can make one employer of labour and also make one to smile to the bank at the end of every three months when those vegetables would have matured for harvesting.
“But for harvesting, one need proper preservation tool like cold room etc to keep them from spoilage, especially, if one has to transport them directly to buyers. But in my own case, large quantity buyers use to come to buy them directly from my farm.”
Business Capital
Reacting to how much one can use as initial startup, he said, one can start with as little as N10,000 by buying the seedlings. For small or individual/family vegetables, which can be grown within one’s home, one can get N5,000 seedlings with either sacks or buckets. But for large scale, one will need at least, N50,000 as some of the seedlings may die off and there will be need to replace them. With dry season vegetables farm, one will not be afraid of various insects, pests that are often around during raining season.
“As maturity of most vegetables are three months, one can make between N500,000 from the N50,000 investment. Depending on how large the land may be, one can make more profits as most middlemen/women come directly to the farm to buy in bulk. Unless you have contact with hoteliers etc, you may not bother to transport them on your own,” he pointed out.
