As part of its determination to ensure that Nigerians enjoy the health benefits of eating pure organic foods, produced without chemical addictives and preservatives, XtraLarge Farms, a Nigerian agricultural investment firm, has introduced its newest product known as Xtralarge meal.
The meal, which is made up of plantain and local rice, appears as smooth as pounded yam, and can be, consumed any kind of soup after preparation.
The firm, which has the vision of raising a generation of passionate farmers, has also unveiled its Agritech City, which would be driven by technology and Xtratoken that will serve as a means of exchange that would be used to pay for the products and services that would be rendered in the proposed Agritech City.
Speaking to journalists at the prelaunch event held in Lagos on Wednesday, Seyi Davids, chief executive officer of Xtralarge Farms, said the concept of establishing an Agritech City, which would be driven by technology, was to encourage more youths to have interest in agriculture.
“Xtralarge Farms has a lot of products and services that would be rendered in the Agritech City. This was why the Xtratoken would serve as a means of exchange within the city. The city is about 3,000 acres of land and the Xtratoken will be made available for only family members, who bought into the Xtralarge ideas and values,” he said.
According to him, the City is located along Idiroko area of Ogun State and work will commence immediately. “Before building, there are preliminary works that includes getting the town planners to license the establishment of the city and it is expected to open for business in 2021,” he said.
“Xtratoken is a utility token for general transactions within the Xtralarge family and will serve as the only acceptable medium of exchange for goods and services in the Agritech City. This token shall become valid for transactions fully in June 2021, when the city will be open for business. We are giving people the opportunity to pre-hold the currency and enjoy the underlining benefits,” he said.
Davids, who said that Xtralarge Farms has empowerment programme including Food Network that brings many people together for the common purpose of empowering one another, said the concept of the city is to bring farmers together, who grow and consume their produces in order to ensure that members are consuming organic foods.
He further said that purchasing the token at an early stage will give members the opportunity to be part of the building process, and such get certain privileges and Very Important Person (VIP) treatment, when the city becomes fully operational.
“Purchasing Xtratoken at inception, will enable members the opportunity of buying at an introductory price of 100 dollars to each token and buyer can hold a minimum of one token and a maximum of 100 tokens that equals 10,000 dollars,” he added.
In her presentation, Moji Davids, wife of the visioner, said the major challenges of today Nigerian farmers, starts with sourcing for lands and labourers to work on the farm because many Nigerian youths are only interested in going to school to acquire Western education in order to secure white collar job in the future.
“Today, parents have dreams for their children, which exclude becoming farmers. We use to go to Togo and Benin Republic to source for labourers when we started. But today, that has equally become very difficult due to the increasing security challenges in the country. Foreigners are becoming afraid of being kidnapped,” she said.
Moji said that another major challenge is deciding what to farm in terms of the type of crop as well as sourcing for market for the produce after harvest. She however added that storage and transportation of farm produces are other major challenges due to poor network of Nigerian roads and lack of storage facilities.
“If we continue to allow people to go through these challenges, a lot of people would pull out that was why Xtralarge Farms put up different packages to encourage people to invest in farming projects without involving in the farming process. We do the whole of cultivating and allow our investors to make profit,” she further explained.
According to her, Xtralarge Farm introduced the Recession Exemption Package in 2016 with an assurance of 100 percent return on investment, where an investor, who puts in N30,000 would receive N60,000 at the end.
“In 2016, we started with just 72 members but today, we have a membership of close to 15,000 persons and our dream is to have up to 1 million members. We produce vegetables, yam, fish, chickens, cows and others. We see market women paying as much as N2 million for vegetables that have not been harvested and at a point, we started recording more demand than supply,” she said.
Some of the members of the Xtralarge investors, who gave testimonies from the experiences, described the investment as very reliable.
Gbambode Oluwaseun, a member, said he joined the business, when he was searching for a credible investment network to put in his hard earned resources. He said the investment has never failed to repatriate profits and has regularly made payment as projected since 2016.
Yetunde Oladipupo, another member, who noted that she left banking eight years back, said her money started working for her since she joined the Xtralarge family.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
