Udoka Inwang: How to make money from vegetable and fruit farming
HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM VEGETABLE FARMING AND FRUIT FARMING IN NIGERIA : THE SUCCESS STORY OF UDOKA INWANG
How to make money from vegetable and fruit farming in Nigeria is simple but you must give it the hours, to make it a reality. Udoka Inwang is the co-founder of Agribloom, an agribusiness enterprise.
He is a business developer with over three years of experience working with over 30 start-ups across Nigeria to successfully help, ideate, build prototypes, launch and secure fundings. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow, a Tony Elumelu Entrepreneur and British Council business acceleration Bootcamp winner.
Udoka Inwang is a graduate of Electronics and communication engineering from the University College Ghana and holds an MSc degree in Information and Communication Engineering.
Udoka Inwang is a Vegetable and Fruit Farmer and his story will inspire you to go into agriculture.
According to him, he ventured into agriculture while consulting for a Cameroonian farmer. He took interest in vegetable farming when he saw the number of jobs that can be created in the sector and began thinking of how to make money from vegetable and fruit farming in Nigeria.
After a market survey, Udoka seeing the market void and volumes of tomato and other vegetable crops that were brought into the Southern part of Nigeria became alarmed and decided to produce the vegetables in Akwa Ibom state to get the products closer to the local market thereby reducing the post-harvest losses incurred during transportation and filling the void.
Vegetable farming is a money-spinner. Udoka says that if you spend a minimum of 2 million Naira on a one-hectare tomato farm during the rainy season, you will get over 1200 Cameroonian baskets of tomato going for a minimum of N5000 per basket between August and October, also going for a maximum of N7000 per basket. So you can get a net profit of 5 million naira from a 2 million investment. The profit margin for watermelon and cabbage farm is even higher!
Udoka says that the starting capital of Agribloom was 2 million naira because they started on two hectares of land planting Tomato and pepper. The funds were raised using the farmcrowdy model and by selling out equity shares.
The highpoints for Agribloom was contributing and enabling volumes of produce for domestic consumption in Akwa Ibom State between April to June 2020 during the lockdown that affected the quantities that do come in from other zones. Also within 9 months, Agribloom has gainfully employed 40 permanent staff and over 30 temporary staff, and currently, Agribloom has four farms: two in Ekeya, Okobo Lga and two at Idu-Uruan.
Agribloom is registered as a cooperative and the founders are working on getting a limited liability registration. The business has a top management structure consisting of the CEO, CTO, CFO, CMO and CSO. There are also farm managers, compliance officers and farm technicians, all with assigned roles and responsibilities.
Udoka is optimistic that Agribloom will produce more if Angel Investors or corporate organizations can enable scalability on a 20 hectares worth of farmland to cultivate and provide access to farm inputs like tractor, bulldozer and fertilizers.
Udoka advises anyone who is thinking about how to make money from vegetable and fruit farming in Nigeria to think of sustainable structures for long term running of their vegetable and fruit farms. He advocates for partnership with other farmers.
What else are you waiting for? The multi-million Naira Vegetable Farming sector is worth exploring!
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